The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is the debut novel by the American author Carson McCullers. It is about a deaf man named John Singer and the people he encounters in a 1930s mill town in the US state of Georgia.
The book begins with a focus on the relationship between two close friends, John Singer and Spiros Antonapoulos, deaf-mutes who have lived together for several years. Antonapoulos becomes mentally ill, misbehaves, and, despite attempts at intervention from Singer, is eventually put into an insane asylum away from town. Now alone, Singer moves into a new room.
The remainder of the narrative centers on the struggles of four of John Singer's acquaintances: Mick Kelly, a tomboy who loves music and dreams of buying a piano; Jake Blount, an alcoholic labor agitator; Biff Brannon, the observant owner of a diner; and Dr. Benedict Mady Copeland, an idealistic physician.

Carson McCullers (1917-1967) was the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Member of the Wedding, Reflections in a Golden Eye, and Clock Without Hands. Born in Columbus, Georgia, on February 19, 1917, she became a promising pianist and enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York when she was seventeen, but lacking money for tuition, she never attended classes. Instead she studied writing at Columbia University, which ultimately led to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, the novel that made her an overnight literary sensation. On September 29, 1967, at age fifty, she died in Nyack, New York, where she is buried.