Summary
Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two fri... Full description
Summary: |
Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world. A bestseller for more than thirty years, A Separate Peace is John Knowles's crowning achievement and an undisputed American classic. |
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Physical Description: |
204 p. ; 22 cm. |
ISBN: |
0743253973 (pbk.) 9780743253970 (pbk.) |
Author Notes: |
A Separate Peace, his first novel, was published in 1959 in England and the United States. Set in a prep school much like Exeter, the novel takes place during World War II and is about the impact of the war on young men on the homefront; the troubled relationship of the two main characters symbolizes the fear and suspicion that can lead to war between nations. Knowles received the William Faulkner Foundation Award for a First Novel and the Independent School Education Board Award. A Separate Peace continues to be one of the most widely read novels in high schools and colleges. Knowles's subsequent novels include Morning in Antibes (1962), A Vein of Riches (1978), which is set in his native West Virginia, and Peace Breaks Out (1981) which returns to the setting of A Separate Peace. He also wrote a non-fiction book, Double Vision: American Thoughts Abroad (1964). He remains best known, however, for his first novel. John Knowles has lived on Long Island, N.Y. since the early 1960s. (Bowker Author Biography) |