MemoirShort StoriesLiterary Fiction

Tobias Wolff

American · b. 1945

2 books reviewed Avg rating 4.3 / 5Top rating 4.4 / 5

Tobias Wolff is an American writer celebrated for his memoirs and short stories, author of This Boy's Life and the Vietnam memoir In Pharaoh's Army.

Tobias Wolff is a leading figure in the American memoir and short-story renaissance, known for his precise, honest, and emotionally resonant prose.

His memoir This Boy’s Life (1989), recounting his turbulent boyhood with an abusive stepfather, became a modern classic and a celebrated film. His Vietnam memoir In Pharaoh’s Army and his acclaimed short-story collections, including In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, confirmed his mastery of compressed, revealing narrative. He also wrote the novel Old School.

Wolff is admired for his unsparing honesty, craftsmanship, and his contributions to both the memoir and the modern American short story.

2 Books Reviewed

BestsellerEditor's Pick

This Boy's Life

by Tobias Wolff

4.4

Tobias Wolff's memoir of his childhood in the late 1950s in Chinook, Washington, with his mother and her brutal second husband Dwight. He lies compulsively, reinvents himself repeatedly, and eventually escapes to a Connecticut boarding school on fraudulently obtained recommendations. One of the great American coming-of-age memoirs — about the self as a thing to be constructed rather than discovered.

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In Pharaoh's Army

by Tobias Wolff

4.2

Wolff's memoir of his year in Vietnam as an Army Special Forces advisor — stationed in a provincial town, teaching Vietnamese soldiers, trying not to die. Written with the precision and moral seriousness of his fiction, it is among the best literary memoirs of the Vietnam War.

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Reading Guides & Lists

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Where to Start with Tobias Wolff: A Reading Guide

Where to start with Tobias Wolff — whether to begin with This Boy's Life, In Pharaoh's Army, or his short stories. A complete reading guide to the American memoirist.

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Tobias Wolff Books in Order: Complete Bibliography & Best Starting Points

Tobias Wolff's complete bibliography in order — from This Boy's Life and In Pharaoh's Army to Old School. Best starting points for new readers.

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