An American coming-of-age tale during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to the second world war.

Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and lumi-nous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, intro-verted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil ath-lete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

John Knowles, who died in 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.