Three novels from a multiple Academy Award winner and the New York Times –bestselling author of The Princess Bride .
In Boys and Girls Together , author William Goldman offers a beautiful tale of early adulthood inspired by his own experiences. Five friends—all young, creative, ambitious, and troubled—make their way to New York City to pursue their dreams. Together they struggle, fight, love, make art, and face the hard truths of life.
In Marathon Man —the New York Times –bestselling thriller Goldman adapted into the classic film starring Dustin Hoffman and Sir Laurence Olivier—Columbia University student and aspiring marathon runner Thomas “Babe” Levy is trying to clear his late father’s name after accusations of Communist affiliation. But soon Thomas finds himself embroiled in a Nazi conspiracy—and running for his life.
In Goldman’s debut novel, The Temple of Gold , Raymond Euripides Trevitt comes of age in midwestern, mid-twentieth-century America. He is virtually alone in Athens, Illinois, until a boy named Zock moves in next door. Through adolescence, double dating, and first loves, they grow up side-by-side. But as their paths diverge, a tragic accident leaves Ray alone once again, and he must learn to find hope in the depths of despair.
Goldman grew up in a Jewish family in Highland Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, and obtained a BA degree at Oberlin College in 1952 and an MA degree at Columbia University in 1956.His brother was the late James Goldman, author and playwright.
William Goldman had published five novels and had three plays produced on Broadway before he began to write screenplays. Several of his novels he later used as the foundation for his screenplays.
In the 1980s he wrote a series of memoirs looking at his professional life on Broadway and in Hollywood (in one of these he famously remarked that "Nobody knows anything"). He then returned to writing novels. He then adapted his novel The Princess Bride to the screen, which marked his re-entry into screenwriting.
Goldman won two Academy Awards: an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for All the President's Men. He also won two Edgar Awards, from the Mystery Writers of America, for Best Motion Picture Screenplay: for Harper in 1967, and for Magic (adapted from his own 1976 novel) in 1979.
Goldman died in New York City on November 16, 2018, due to complications from colon cancer and pneumonia. He was eighty-seven years old.