Reflections in a Golden Eye is a 1941 novel by Carson McCullers, set on a Southern army base in the 1930s. The story follows Captain Penderton, a bisexual officer whose life unravels with the arrival of Major Langdon, a charismatic womaniser. Langdon begins an affair with Penderton’s spirited and flirtatious wife, Leonora, triggering a complex entanglement of desire, jealousy, and repression.

Upon its release, the novel’s daring exploration of taboo themes left critics uncertain. Yet, Time magazine praised it as “a masterpiece . . . as mature and finished as Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw,” noting McCullers’s “simplicity, insight, and rare gift of phrase” in transforming potentially lurid material into a work of haunting literary elegance. Written during the turbulent period of McCullers’s own crumbling marriage, the novel remains a striking examination of human vulnerability and hidden passion.