(04/13/27 PREORDER) The Voyage Out: A Novel (Vintage Classics)

Woolf's brilliant and haunting first novel is the story of a sheltered young woman on a journey of self-discovery with mythical overtones.

When young Rachel Vinrace boards a ship headed for South America, accompanied by her aunt and uncle, she leaves behind her cloistered and constricted life in London. As she crosses an ocean and arrives at a coastal resort, she is surrounded by a comically varied cast of characters and discovers a wider world of books, politics, ideas, and emotions opening new vistas for her to eagerly explore.

But the outward journey of this burgeoning free spirit is also a journey inward, deeper into her own passionate nature, and after Rachel falls in love with a similarly questing young man—an aspiring writer who sees in her what no one else ever has—her story takes a turn towards tragedy.

"The Voyage Out is a strange, tragic, inspired book whose scene is a South America not found on any map and reached by a boat which would not float on any sea, an America whose spiritual boundaries touch Xanadu and Atlantis." —E. M. Forster