A Separate Peace

About A Separate Peace

John Knowles's A Separate Peace (1959) is one of the most widely read coming-of-age novels in American literature — Gene Forrester and Phineas ('Finny') at the Devon School in New Hampshire during the Second World War, the friendship between an intellectual and an athlete destroyed by a moment of jealousy. Knowles based Devon on Phillips Exeter Academy; the novel became a standard part of American secondary school curricula for decades. A single standalone novel with no true sequel, though Knowles wrote Peace Breaks Out (1981) set in the same school with different characters. Its themes of adolescent identity, envy, and the loss of innocence put it in direct conversation with The Catcher in the Rye.