In honour of the centennial of the birth of J.D. Salinger in 1919, Penguin reissues all four of his books in beautiful commemorative hardback editions - with artwork and text based on the very first Salinger editions published in the 1950s and 1960s. The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield... One of the greatest American novels of all time, The Catcher in the Rye is a classic coming-of-age story: an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind. 'A perfect novel ... it changed US culture forever' Independent 'It was a very pure voice he had. There was no one like him' Martin Amis 'He was the poet of youthful alienation before youth really knew what that was' Sunday Times 'His work meant a lot to me when I was a young person and his writing still sings now' Dave Eggers