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 the books shortlisted for the 2014 Prize, and further back about the one book they would have liked to win the Prize if it had always existed.

Geoff Dyer on American Purgatorio by John Haskell (2005)

 

I keep coming back to John Haskell’s American Purgatorio: a road trip across America that is hilarious and philosophical (in the way that philosophy often isn’t). From the quiet nod to Bellow in the opening sentence - ‘I’m from Chicago originally’ - to the unbearably poignant closing scenes it’s wonderfully gripping and inventive. An unfairly neglected masterpiece, in short.