A Life in Letters

‘It’s all here, Updike in full, and almost none of it has gone stale. An unbroken arc from boyhood to infirmity, a gravity’s rainbow of a life, career and mind’ London Review of Books

A landmark collection from a letter-writer of genius, this is a book which delights and illuminates on every page. It is also a celebration of the life and writing of one of the great American writers of the 20th century. Filled with comic observations, opinions and personal news, told in the fluid first person of the author himself, these letters form a page-turning ‘life in letters’ like no other.

‘Brilliant, riveting and essential’ The Times

‘Profoundly poignant’ Telegraph

‘His letters are gold’ Financial Times

'John Updike had the prose style of a literary genius . . . Incapable of writing a bad sentence' John Banville, Guardian