Play It as It Lays is a ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, capturing the mood of an entire generation. Joan Didion chose Hollywood to serve as her microcosm of contemporary society, exposing a culture characterized by emptiness and ennui.

Set in a place beyond good and evil – literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul – it remains a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.