Alan Hollinghurst is a celebrated English novelist known for his exquisite prose and sharp observations on social strata and sexual identity. His novels masterfully explore themes of desire, memory, and the shifting landscape of British society. Through precise language and rich descriptions, Hollinghurst crafts compelling narratives that draw readers into complex human relationships and intellectual explorations.
Exploring themes of race, class, sexuality, and identity, the narrative follows Dave Win, a biracial boy navigating life from his scholarship to a prestigious boarding school in the 1960s. As he encounters the complexities of privilege and prejudice, the story delves into his journey through queer culture, unrecognized talent in theater, and a fulfilling late-life marriage. With a blend of beauty and pain, the novel captures the intricacies of modern England and the impact of societal expectations on personal identity and relationships.
Designed to foster critical engagement and interest the specialist and non-
specialist alike, each book in the Frick Diptych series illuminates a single
work in the Frick's rich collection with an essay by a Frick curator paired
with a contribution from a contemporary artist or writer
From the internationally acclaimed winner of the Man Booker Prize comes a masterly novel that spans seven transformative decades in England, delving into the complex relationships of a remarkable family. In 1940, David Sparsholt arrives at Oxford to study engineering, aiming to join the Royal Air Force. Charismatic and athletic, he remains unaware of his impact on others, particularly Evert Dax, the lonely son of a celebrated novelist destined to become a writer. Amid the chaos of war and the Blitz in London, Oxford serves as a backdrop of fleeting beauty and secret liaisons. A friendship between David and Evert develops, leading to unexpected consequences throughout the narrative. This novel explores David Sparsholt's legacy across three generations, revealing the shifts in taste, morality, and private life through vividly rendered episodes: a Sparsholt holiday in Cornwall, eccentric gatherings at the Dax family home, and the adventures of David's son Johnny, a painter in 1970s London. It captures the dynamics of a group of friends united by art, literature, and love. Ultimately, it reflects on the increasing openness of gay life while meditating on human transience and the deep longing for permanence and continuity.
With an introduction by Sebastian FaulksWinner of the Man Booker Prize in 2004, a classic novel about class, politics and sexuality in Margaret Thatcher's 1980s Britain.There was the soft glare of the flash -- twice -- three times -- a gleaming sense of occasion, the gleam floating in the eye as a blot of shadow, his heart running fast with no particular need of courage as he grinned and said, 'Prime Minister, would you like to dance? In the summer of 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the wealthy Feddens: Gerald, an ambitious Tory MP, his wife Rachel and their children Toby and Catherine. Innocent of politics and money, Nick is swept up into the Feddens' world and an era of endless possibility, all the while pursuing his own private obsession with beauty. The Line of Beauty is Alan Hollinghurst's Man Booker Prize-winning masterpiece. It is a novel that defines a decade, exploring with peerless style a young man's collision with his own desires, and with a world he can never truly belong to.
Penelope Fitzgerald's Booker Prize-winning novel of loneliness and connecting
is set among the houseboat community of the Thames and has a new introduction
from Alan Hollinghurst.
The Sunday Times Novel of the Year 'With The Stranger's Child, an already remarkable talent unfurls into something spectacular' Sunday Times In the late summer of 1913, George Sawle brings his Cambridge friend Cecil Valance, a charismatic young poet, to visit his family home. Filled with intimacies and confusions, the weekend will link the families for ever, having the most lasting impact on George's sixteen-year-old sister Daphne. As the decades pass, Daphne and those around her endure startling changes in fortune and circumstance, reputations rise and fall, secrets are revealed and hidden and the events of that long-ago summer become part of a legendary story, told and interpreted in different ways by successive generations. Powerful, absorbing and richly comic, The Stranger's Child is a masterly exploration of English culture, taste and attitudes over a century of change. 'I would compare the novel to Middlemarch . . . a remarkable, unmissable achievement' Independent 'Magnificent . . . universally acclaimed as the best novel of the year' Philip Hensher
Alan Hollinghurst's first novel is a tour de force: a darkly erotic work that centres on the friendship of William Beckwith, a young gay aristocrat who leads a life of privilege and promiscuity, and the elderly Lord Nantwich, who is searching for someone to write his biography.
Young, gay, William Beckwith spends his time, and his trust fund, idly cruising London for erotic encounters. When he saves the life of an elderly man in a public convenience an unlikely job opportunity presents itself. The man is Lord Nantwich, a gay peer of the realm and in the market for a biographer. Reluctantly accepting the commission, Will receives the first of Nantwich's diaries. But in the story he unravels, a tragedy of early 20th century gay repression, lurk bitter truths about Will's own privileged existence.
A comedy of sexual manners that follows the interlocking affairs of four men: Robin Woodfield, an architect in his late forties living with his younger lover Justin (a would-be actor) in Dorset; Robin's 22-year-old son Danny, who lives for clubbing and casual sex; and shy Alex
