Five Books editors and interviewees

Life in an academic institution can be a curiously intense experience. As a result, the hot-house atmosphere of a university campus or boarding school presents an excellent backdrop for novels exploring ambition, power dynamics, crushes, and sexual crises. Here, we’ve pulled together a list of campus novels that have been recommended on Five Books over the years, via our interviews with literary scholars, bestselling authors and book prize judges.

We’re looking forward to the announcement of this year’s six-book Booker Prize shortlist in mid-September. But until then, perhaps you’d like to work your way through the backlist of Booker Prize-winning novels from the last twenty years?