From the Academy

The Academy is a great store of knowledge and opinion about great books. From time to time we ask its members to write a short piece on books they have admired. Here are some of their responses, most recently about 2015 Folio Prize winner Akhil Sharma’s Family Life, and further back about the one book they would have liked to win the Prize if it had always existed.

Bret Easton Ellis on Stoner by John Williams (1965)

Well, I recently read Stoner by John Williams, which was published in 1965 and disappeared. In recent years it has been rediscovered and after many recommendations I read it and it’s a great American novel, a modern classic. The events aren’t particularly dramatic – it’s about the life of a quiet man who becomes a university professor – but the masterly prose is hypnotic and its neutral meditative quality makes Stoner a very powerful reading experience.

Great finds