by Louis Begley
First published 2007
Henry White arrives at Harvard in the early 1950s carrying secrets from his wartime survival in Poland. His roommates present their own puzzles: Archibald Palmer, raised in military families across the world, and Sam Standish, who just discovered his adoption into a prominent New England family he now despises. Henry wants nothing more than to shed his past and live as a full American, but the other two are equally determined to escape their origins. The three young men form an unlikely friendship as each attempts to construct a new identity from scratch. Yet reinvention demands sacrifices that none of them anticipate. Over the decades that follow, their choices will test every bond they hold dear. The costs mount as they discover that abandoning the past means betraying parents, friends, and pieces of themselves they cannot afford to lose.
Genres: drama, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, coming-of-age, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, reinvention
Setting: Harvard, Poland
Period: 1950s
Hardcover · Suhrkamp Verlag KG