Description
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, Lord Nantwich, is seeking a biographer. Will agrees to take a look at Nantwich's diaries. But in the story he unravels, a tragedy of twentieth-century gay repression, lurk bitter truths about Will's own privileged existence.
'Deserves first prize in every category... superbly written, wildly funny' Daily Telegraph
About the Author
Alan Hollinghurst was born in 1954. He is the author of one of the most highly praised first novels to appear in the 1980s, The Swimming-Pool Library, and was selected as one of the Best of Young British Novelists 1993. His second novel, The Folding Star, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize. His novel The Line of Beauty won the Booker Prize in 2004. His most recent novel, The Sparsholt Affair, was published in 2017.
Reviews
The first major novel in Britain to put gay life in its modern place and context... A historic novel and historic debut * Guardian *
Deserves first prize in every category... superbly written, wildly funny * Daily Telegraph *
The tautness and energy of Alan Hollinghurst's novel derive from its ambiguous status a it shimmers somewhere between pastoral romance and sulphurous confession, between an affectionate and credible rendering of contemporary mores and lurid melodrama...classic English prose...surely the best book about gay life yet written by an English author * Sunday Times *
Beautifully welds the standard conventions of fiction to a tale of modern transgressions.It tells of impurities with shimmering elegance, of complexities with a camp-fired wit and of truths with a fiction's solid grace * New York Times Book Review *
The Swimming-Pool Library is a perfect debut, in that it arrives confidently, with a fully formed style and bank of themes that the author would go on to explore for years to come * Attitude *
Book Information
ISBN 9781784870317
Author Alan Hollinghurst
Format Paperback
Page Count 432
Imprint Vintage Classics
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 298g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 26mm
'Deserves first prize in every category... superbly written, wildly funny' Daily Telegraph
About the Author
Alan Hollinghurst was born in 1954. He is the author of one of the most highly praised first novels to appear in the 1980s, The Swimming-Pool Library, and was selected as one of the Best of Young British Novelists 1993. His second novel, The Folding Star, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize. His novel The Line of Beauty won the Booker Prize in 2004. His most recent novel, The Sparsholt Affair, was published in 2017.
Reviews
The first major novel in Britain to put gay life in its modern place and context... A historic novel and historic debut * Guardian *
Deserves first prize in every category... superbly written, wildly funny * Daily Telegraph *
The tautness and energy of Alan Hollinghurst's novel derive from its ambiguous status a it shimmers somewhere between pastoral romance and sulphurous confession, between an affectionate and credible rendering of contemporary mores and lurid melodrama...classic English prose...surely the best book about gay life yet written by an English author * Sunday Times *
Beautifully welds the standard conventions of fiction to a tale of modern transgressions.It tells of impurities with shimmering elegance, of complexities with a camp-fired wit and of truths with a fiction's solid grace * New York Times Book Review *
The Swimming-Pool Library is a perfect debut, in that it arrives confidently, with a fully formed style and bank of themes that the author would go on to explore for years to come * Attitude *
Book Information
ISBN 9781784870317
Author Alan Hollinghurst
Format Paperback
Page Count 432
Imprint Vintage Classics
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 298g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 26mm
