‘Stoner’, by American author John Williams, is the novel chosen in the TIRANT Reading Club to close the current academic year on Monday, June 6th. ‘El lector de Julio Verne’ (Julio Verne’s reader), by the Madrid writer Almudena Grandes, is the work chosen to say goodbye to the academic year of the QUIJOTE Reading Club on Tuesday, June 7th.
Although John Williams received the National Book Award, his work was for a long time forgotten. AlumniUV brings back the figure of the American writer with ‘Stoner’ (1965), a novel that reflects the main character’s search for the true meaning of friendship, love and death. William Stoners is a virtuous and discrete young man, son of Missouri farmers, who is sent to the Faculty of Agriculture thanks to the great effort of his parents. However, he soon realises that his true vocation is literature.
Seduced by this discovery, literature becomes a real obsession that leads him to leave the family farm and become a professor. Focused on his studies and the university world, he lives a lonely and simple life. His taciturn and cold character worsens, as well as his social skills. He lives a grey life, full of mistakes, where his only joy is literature, his only passion. The TIRANT Reading Club will discuss this work on Monday, June 6th, at La Nau Cultural Centre
‘El lector de Julio Verne’ (2012) is the second novel of the series ‘Episodios de una guerra interminable’ (Episodes of a never-ending war), the narrative project of the author Almudena Grandes that travels through Francoist Spain from 1939 to 1964 over the course of six works. Sierra Sur de Jaén and the summer of 1947 are the stages where ‘El lector de Julio Verne’ takes place, a work that follows Nino, the son of a Civil Guard who lives in a military living quarter in a rural village of Andalusia. One day he meets Pepe el Portugués, a mysterious stranger who has just moved into an abandoned mill and who becomes his friend and role model.
Nino swears himself not to become a Civil Guard like his father while he discovers a new world thanks to the adventure novels that will turn him into a different person. Little by little, Nino understands a truth no one has told him: a war is being waged in Sierra Sur, but the enemies of his father are not his own. The QUIJOTE Reading Club will analyse this novel on Tuesday, June 7th, at the Principal Peset Hall of Residence.
Both Alumni Reading Clubs will return in October to continue enjoying and discussing some of the most renowned books of the Valencian and Spanish literature. To participate in the next Clubs, you need to fill a form and be member of the Alumni Premium.
