“We may live differently, but we are all stoners.”

A simple story about a quiet and desperate life,
But a great story that has captured the hearts of people around the world over the past 50 years!

National Book Award (NBA) winner John Williams' novel "Stoner"
★2013 Waterstone's Book of the Year
★Bestseller across Europe, including the UK, France, Germany, and the Netherlands

50 years after its publication, Stoner, a great novel that captivated the world beyond America.
The life of a man who silently tried to walk his own path transcends time and space and penetrates our hearts today.

In 2013, the book chosen as the Book of the Year by Waterstones, the largest bookstore chain in the UK, was neither a book by Julian Barnes, who is currently the most popular author, nor a book by Kate Adkins.
The protagonist of "Stoner" is a simple story about the life of an introverted man who was born the son of a farmer, loved literature, and quietly tried to follow his own path.
It wasn't a special occasion or a new issue that drew attention.
At first glance, this book seems like nothing more than a story of miserable failure, but the life of the protagonist, William Stoner, who silently accepts his sorrow in his own way without blaming anyone, resonated deeply and captured the hearts of European readers.
After being published in the United States in 1965, Stoner, which had been forgotten by readers for a long time, became a bestseller, drawing enthusiastic responses from European publishers, critics, and readers in the UK, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
It was only after 20 years since the author John Williams passed away, after a gap of 50 years, that he was finally properly evaluated by the world.
A bestseller that has spread a "late but fresh emotion" beyond the US and Europe, "Stoner" has finally arrived for Korean readers.

There is a life that requires proving something 'without a single success or failure', not a life of success or failure.
This is why we listen to the lives of ordinary, quiet stoners and the source of their passionate emotions.

William Stoner, a farmer's son, goes to college to study agriculture at the age of nineteen.
A path chosen against one's own will.
However, Shakespeare's seventy-third sonnet, which he encountered in an introduction to English literature class, changed his life completely.
I came to love literature.
Instead of returning home, Stoner chose to remain at university and pursue an English literature degree.
He marries the woman he loves, starts a family, becomes a professor, and lives his life as an educator.
He was more passionate about academic achievement than about school politics or career advancement, and he loved his family, but for some reason, his position at university and at home was unstable.
Isolated from his family and colleagues, his life was sad and lonely, a failure by the world's standards.
But even in the midst of world wars and the Great Depression, suffering from personal misfortune and love failures, and battling sudden illness, he tries to live as himself until the very end.
It's as if he's trying to prove something through his life, just like the research he dedicated his life to.

Sometimes the world too easily divides people into 'successful lives' and 'failed lives'.
Stoner also experiences a few minor successes and failures, but by the world's standards his life is that of a failure.
However, author John Williams portrayed Stoner's life in a slightly different way.
The author unfolds the life of an unremarkable man with his characteristically tenacious and meticulous descriptions, truthfully and powerfully, and with compassion for humanity.
Perhaps that is why readers who read the book deeply empathize with the protagonist Stoner feel a sense of desolation even in moments of small success.
The story begins with Stoner's birth and ends with his death.
The insight and inspiration that all the shining and special moments of life can be contained in the life of an ordinary person suddenly and all at once come to the reader's heart after closing the book.
It was a 'lonely life', but it is a moving story of the silent struggle of someone who has achieved something shining in their loneliness, despite the truth of life that we are all completely alone.
It is a contrasting approach and narrative to most classical literature, which sets up a protagonist who is more special than others and tells the essence of life through dramatic success and spectacular downfall, but the emotion it conveys is no different; rather, it is deeper and more mysterious.
Isn't this the extraordinary created by the accumulation of the ordinary, and the driving force behind the novel "Stoner"'s continued attention after 50 years?


A story similar to yours, one that walks its own path while enduring sadness and loneliness.

Although our lifestyles may be different, we are all stoners.


The novel "Stoner", which received favorable reviews from literary circles and critics when it was published in 1965, failed to gain much traction and was forgotten for a long time.
It took the efforts of discerning writers and publishers to make this book, once difficult to obtain and read only by writers and professors who recognized its value, available to many people around the world after 50 years.
Anna Gavalda, a French female writer who is also loved in Korea, began to make her work known in Europe when she translated it into French, and Vintage Classics, a subsidiary of Random House, the largest publisher in the English-speaking world, promoted Stoner by including a chapter from Stoner in the e-book of Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.
The story, which appears to be calm and indifferent, but is delicately described in tight sentences, and the quiet and introverted character of 'Stoner' surprisingly caught the readers' attention with their charm that was the complete opposite of the protagonist Gatsby's overflowing desire for a glamorous life, enormous wealth, and success.

Actor Tom Hanks said:
“This is just the story of a man who went to college and became a professor.
But above all, it is also a fascinating story.” Why does the image of Stoner, the protagonist depicted by author John Williams, evoke such empathy from us, here and now?
Perhaps it is because the frustration, sadness, and loneliness that Stoner must have experienced resonate more deeply and desperately with modern people, who have relatively little time to take care of themselves in the so-called "fatigued society" where the possibility of failure is greater than that of success.
William Stoner, who, despite everything, lived his own life, loving and forgiving people in his own way without wavering.
Why not open your heart to the comfort and courage his presence brings?