The View from Pompey's Head

Blurb

The View from Pompey's Head is a novel by Hamilton Basso which spent 40 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List after it was published by Doubleday in 1954.
The book was reviewed in 1954 by The New York Times in 1954: and the Saturday Review
The book was reprinted by the Louisiana State University Press in 1998 as part of its "Voices of the South" series. The Light Infantry Ball, Basso's prequel to The View from Pompey's Head, was a finalist for the 1960 National Book Award.
Inez Hollander Lake, in her biography of Basso, wrote "Comfortably placed on The New York Times bestseller list for 40 weeks,"selling more than 75,000 copies, and sold to the movies for $100,000, The View from Pompey's Head was the breakthrough that Basso had been waiting for. However, just as one cannot argue that Melville's Typee was a better book because it sold more copies than Moby-Dick, so it is equally impossible to claim that The View from Pompey's Head was a masterpiece because it was so popular."