C ampus novels are often vehicles of social satire—creating a closed social circle within which academic status and career success are the focus of close rivalry—but equally they can serve as microcosms of society as a whole, where simulacra of contemporary crises and conflicts play out within the confines of a small institution.
“One thing I was really torn on was that I initially wanted to include an American novel from a writer born outside the country, because some of the clearest-eyed books about America come from these writers. Right up until late I had Pnin (1957) on the list, because I don’t think anyone else describes America like Nabokov does. I’ve always perceived the American landscape in Nabokov as having the qualities of a diorama: a façade of buildings, roads and cars that is scrupulously presented, and where the relations between every visible object are very clear and well-defined. And then threaded through that you have this seam of psychological chaos that is never fully absorbed into the materials of that landscape; and the tension that is produced, which I suppose could also be one definition of the immigrant writer’s experience, is where the work comes from.” Read more...
The Best 20th-Century American Novels
David Hering ,
Possession, a beloved literary novel which won the Booker Prize in 1990, is a two-stranded historical romance in which two 20th-century literary scholars enter a complicated relationship after the discovery of love letters in an archived text. The book features long sections of poetry—pastiches in the Victorian style, as well as letters and fictional diary entries. "I was terrified of the poems," she explained years later. "I knew I was a prose person." Ultimately, however, she found that she managed. "It really was a sort of experience of being possessed. It was an experience of all the Victorian poems that didn’t exist and should have existed suddenly crowding up like ghosts in Homer and trying to get out. There was no problem to writing any of it. I didn’t have to think about it."
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Elif Batuman’s debut novel follows Selin during her first year at Harvard and is based on Batuman’s own time at Harvard. The Idiot was published in 2017, but Batuman started writing it in 2000-1 during her year off from graduate school. The Idiot has benefitted from this, having both the immediacy and energy from having been written during that period of her life, as well as maturity and confidence. The Idiot is a captivating read with an exciting cast of characters, from the charismatic and outspoken Svetlana, Selin’s best friend, to the mysterious Ivan, a looming and enigmatic presence in the novel.
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N+1 editor Chad Harbach's 2011 campus novel follows a baseball savant at the fictional Westish College—on the shores of Lake Michigan, Wisconsin. Shortstop Henry Skrimshander is socially awkward but extremely gifted; student sports star Mike Schwartz secures Skrimshander a scholarship and offers him 1:1 coaching, revolutionising their college team's fortunes—until Skrimshander suffers a psychological collapse. Though gently comic, the book is a love letter to the community found in small liberal arts colleges, and the transcendence that might be found in repetitive practice.
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Eugenide's eagerly awaited follow-up to The Virgin Suicides Middlesex
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“It follows the story of a young man who is brought to Oxford from China. He is brought there to learn this magic, along with several other people from various backgrounds from around the British Empire, all brought in to use their powers to further the Empire. Over time, he begins to turn against this. It turns into this beautifully written anti-colonial narrative that’s also imbued heavily with magic, as well as people’s interpersonal relationships, and then the history of the time. It’s really well done.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fantasy Books
P. Djèlí Clark ,
Novelist
“Please don’t be put off by the cover! This doesn’t look like an adult fiction book, but Curtis Sittenfeld is a very serious and accomplished writer. It’s a coming of age novel set at a fancy school in Massachusetts called Ault, and its entirely inside the head of this young girl called Lee, who is a very unlikeable, passive, whiny and kind of standoffish young woman, who’s convinced that she’s the consummate victim. That’s what makes the book such a great read; it’s a microscopically accurate, vivid portrayal of adolescent awkwardness and interiority.” Read more...
The Best Boarding School Novels
Anbara Salam ,
Novelist
Donna Tartt's global blockbuster The Secret History follows six Classics students at Hampden College, an elite—somewhat louche—institution loosely based on Vermont's Bennington College, where Tartt herself was a student. As our narrator Richard Papen reflects on the events leading up to the death of his friend Edmund ‘Bunny’ Corcoran, The Secret History explores the limits of morality and the devastating consequences of secrets. Credited with inspiring the 'dark academia' trend , Tartt draws us into the lives of a socially isolated cohort and their eccentric professor at an elite liberal arts college as their lives are forever altered. Since publication in 1992, The Secret History has been translated into 24 languages and sold over 5 million copies worldwide.
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“Real Life is about the racism, homophobia and alienation faced by a young man from Alabama, going to a Midwestern university to do a biochemistry degree – the micro-aggressions he faces on a daily basis, and how he maintains his own identity. It’s deeply affecting and emotional, examining desire and pain and grief, memory and fantasy, things from the protagonist’s childhood, as well as the present – while asking the question: ‘What is real life, anyway?’” Read more...
The Best Fiction of 2020: The Booker Prize Shortlist
Margaret Busby ,
Publisher
“For me, it’s a book that’s about the hypocrisy of adults. It’s set in a school, Hailsham, where the students are protected ‘for their own good’ from knowledge of the adult world. Information is never divulged to the students directly, but leaked to them, so that they gain slow acceptance of their fate. Even if you’re not about to get your organs harvested, I think the book accurately reflects how the adult world feels so tantalisingly close as an adolescent, and the secrecy surrounding the adult world— little snippets of it are revealed to you, but never actually discussed. There’s all this inference at play.” Read more...
The Best Boarding School Novels
Anbara Salam ,
Novelist
“Gaudy Night is a beautiful love story. I love the relationship between Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. I just think it’s magnificent. I love the fact that he’s this damaged man who some people dismiss as a posh twit. He suffered during the First World War, he has post-traumatic stress syndrome, and is in love with this woman who he once saved from being hanged for murder in an earlier book. It’s part of a series and that’s important. The setting in Oxford is brilliantly done. It’s charming. It’s very restful in parts. Nothing that bad happens for large chunks of it, so it’s quite soothing in that regard. All these things together epitomize what I love in the crime genre.” Read more...
The Best Classic Crime
Stig Abell ,
Journalist
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