The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye is a novel by the American writer J. D. Salinger, published in 1951. Parts of it had appeared in serial form in 1945 and 1946, but the book as it stands is the version that matters.

Holden Caulfield is the narrator. He knows he is going to be expelled, so he leaves his school early and spends three days in New York, telling the story of what he did and what he suffered while he was there. He has been expelled before, and he has opinions about the school and the people in it.

The novel was written for adults, though it is most often read by adolescents, and it is about alienation and about what its narrator sees as the insincerity of the people around him. Holden has become the standing figure for teenage rebellion in American writing.

It sells about a million copies a year, it was included on Time magazine's list of the hundred best English-language novels published since 1923, and it has been translated widely.