Wings of Desire

Sophie's Choice is a novel by William Styron published in 1979. It concerns a young American Southerner, an aspiring writer, who befriends the Jewish Nathan Landau and his beautiful lover Sophie, a Polish (but non-Jewish) survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. The plot ultimately centers around a tragic decision Sophie was forced to make upon entering the concentration camp, a secret revealed near the end of the story. The novel is often considered both Styron's best work and a major novel of the twentieth century. The difficult decision that shapes the character Sophie is sometimes used as an idiom. A Sophie's Choice is a tragic choice between two unbearable options.