Torgovnick's "Crossing Ocean Parkway" won the American Book Award in 1994.

This work investigates Westerners' profound attraction to cultures that they call "primitive". Marianna Torgovnick explores the stories of Carl Jung, Isak Dinesen, D.H. Lawrence and Georgia O'Keefe and the ways they use the primitive as a medium for soul searching and personal fulfilment. Linking literature, art, psychology and cultural studies, "Primitive Passions" provides insight into our very notion of the exotic.