The Human Comedy, sentimental novel of life in a small California town by William Saroyan, published in 1943. The narrator of the story, 14-year-old Homer Macauley, lives with his widowed mother, his sister Bess, and his little brother Ulysses; his older brother has left home to fight in World War II. While family relationships and domestic situations are in the foreground, the events of the outside world, including the cataclysmic war, are never entirely out of the picture.