Close Quarters

by William Golding

First published 2022

When a group of British schoolboys crash-land on a remote Pacific island, they must band together to endure the harsh realities of their new environment. As food and resources dwindle, the boys' veneer of civility begins to crack, and they descend into a Darwinian struggle for power and dominance. Trapped in close quarters, their primitive impulses and moral compasses are tested to the breaking point, leading to a shocking conclusion that exposes the fragility of human nature.

Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, 20th-century, adventure

Vibes: dark, suspenseful, thought-provoking

Tropes: descent-into-madness, fish-out-of-water

281 pages · Paperback · Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Content warnings: graphic-violence, violence

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