A Separate Peace - (Scribner Classics) by John Knowles (Hardcover)

About the Book

John Knowles' beloved classic has been a bestseller for more than 30 years and is one of the most moving and accurate novels about the trials and confusions of adolescence ever written. Set at an elite boarding school for boys during World War II, A Separate Peace is the story of friendship and treachery, and how a tragic accident involving two young men forever tarnishes their innocence.

Book Synopsis

Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read.

An American classic and great bestseller for over sixty years, A Separate Peace is timeless coming-of-age novel about friendship, rivalry, and adolescence during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to World War II.

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.

Review Quotes

"National Review" A masterpiece.

"The Observer" A model of restraint, deeply felt and beautifully written.

"Warren Miller" Mr. Knowles has something to say about youth and war that few contemporary novelists have attempted to say and none has said better.

Aubrey Menen I think it is the best-written, best-designed, and most moving novel I have read in many years. Beginning with a tiny incident among ordinary boys, it ends by being as deep and as big as evil itself.

About the Author

John Knowles (1926-2001) was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and Yale University, as well as a recipient of the William Faulkner Award and the Rosenthal Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. His books include Separate Peace, Peace Breaks Out, and The Paragon.