Lit in Translation

The Topeka School

The Topeka School

Ben Lerner (born 1979)

English editions

Written in English

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In 1997 Adam Gordon is in his final year at Topeka High, a debating champion tipped for a national title and among the most popular boys in school. His mother, Jane, is a celebrated feminist writer; his father, Jonathan, a psychologist with a gift for drawing out troubled boys. Both are on the staff of a renowned psychiatric clinic in the city. Adam and his friends pull Darren Eberheart, a lonely boy who is secretly Jonathan's patient, into their social life, with grave consequences. Shifting between Adam, his parents and Darren, and across the decades, the novel takes in Jane's abusive father, Jonathan's infidelity and the migraines left by Adam's childhood concussion, and traces how today's angry public speech took shape.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form
Novel
Genres
Family, Coming of age, Autofiction (assigned by AI)
Set in
United States, 1990s
First published
2019
Author's age
40 when first published
ISBN

9781783785360 (Granta Books, United Kingdom)

9780374277789 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, United States)

9781783785377 (Granta Books, United Kingdom)

9781250758002 (Picador, United States)

More
Wikidata