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.

Benjamin Markovits on 2015 Folio Prize winner Akhil Sharma

Family LifeFamily Life has the clarity and vividness of fiction — but its force seems to come from somewhere else. It seems to matter more or differently. Reading it feels almost like a violation, you’re seeing something you shouldn’t see, and yet you don’t want to take your eyes away.