by Tobias Wolff
First published 2005
The unnamed narrator attends an elite American boarding school where students pride themselves on democratic values. Literary merit matters more than family money or social status here. Each term brings a celebrated author to campus for a special contest. Students submit their writing, and whoever wins gets a private meeting with the visiting literary figure. The narrator desperately wants to win one of these competitions. He watches his classmates craft their entries and sees how much these encounters mean to everyone. The school's commitment to literary excellence creates intense pressure among the boys. Each contest becomes a test of talent, ambition, and character. The narrator must decide how far he will go to claim his prize and what he is willing to sacrifice for recognition.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century, coming-of-age, boarding-school, academic
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, unreliable-narrator
Setting: America
Period: 20th-century
195 pages · Paperback · Bloomsbury Publishing Plc