The 10 Best Books of 2020, New York Magazine
Editor’s Choice, New York Times Book Review:
Now out in paperback.
Fraternity is “disarmingly lovely…” and “a revelation”.
Winner of The Paris Review’s 2019 Terry Southern Prize.
Order the book from Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, or your local independent bookstore.
Piece on Faulkner for May 2021 issue of Harper’s
Short story “Basics” w/ Q & A up at Esquire.
Another specially modified for n+1’s site.
"Nugent treats his frat boys with such interest and insight that they become—against all stereotypes—complex, even sympathetic... Nugent's prose is as sensitively crafted as his characters."
Kirkus, starred review:
“Nugent manages—the mark of the master satirist—to be simultaneously compassionate and ruthless. Splendid.”
Publisher’s Weekly:
“A winning collection… [Fraternity] pulses with energy, and Nugent commendably weaves humor and drama to shine an unflinching light on the young adults convening behind fraternity walls. One can almost smell the stale beer on the page.”
Zadie Smith:
“If university is where we finally grow up, what role does the college campus play in creating the adult American man? In these dark, witty, and sharply written stories, Benjamin Nugent takes an unflinching look at that strange tradition, the all-male fraternity, which, in his gifted hands, begins to look like a very strange and insidious social experiment. Take a boy, transform him into a ‘bro,’ and then release into the wild....”
Emma Cline:
“A lovely sequence of stories, moving, dark, and funny.”
Sam Lipsyte:
“From the already legendary opening story, Fraternity only deepens on every front: humor, compassion, syntactical intensity, observational brilliance, and satirical vision. Benjamin Nugent has bided his time, and the wait was worth it. This moving, daring and frequently astonishing debut will be remembered—and emulated—for many years to come.”
Leslie Jamison:
“Reading Benjamin Nugent’s stories doesn’t resemble any other experience I can think of—the paragraphs of Fraternity pivot easily from mantra to gut punch to slapstick to heartbreak, sometimes swelling into tenderness so acute it makes me avert my eyes, it feels so private and human and true.”
Mona Simpson:
“This striking, intimate book is not what it seems. Very funny, and ostensibly about Greek life, with its Kappas, Deltas, disgusting kitchens, and pregaming, it holds at its center a small bomb of realism. Here we have the terror of privileged young people facing uncertain financial futures who find themselves involved with other young people unsheltered by college and all its mythologies. Strangely—for a collection called Fraternity—it is the young women who shimmer in recollection.”
Recent Activity:
I interviewed George Saunders for The Paris Review’s Art of Fiction series. The interview appears in the 2019 Winter Issue. I also wrote a sidebar for the Paris Review Daily on how to imitate Saunders.
“Safe Spaces” won the Paris Review’s 2019 Terry Southern Prize. It appeared in the Summer 2018 issue.
Listen to Jesse Eisenberg read “God” (go to Episode 9).
“Hell” appears in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017, ed. Sarah Vowell.
“The Treasurer” appeared in the Summer 2016 Paris Review.
“God” has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories 2014, ed. Jennifer Egan, and The Unprofessionals: New American Writing from the Paris Review, ed. Lorin Stein.
“God” was originally published in The Paris Review, “Ollie the Owl” in Tin House, “Fan Fiction” and “Hell” in Vice.
Agent: Claudia Ballard, WME
E-mail: b b n u g e n t @ g m a i l dot com