New Releases by Alan Hollinghurst

''An extraordinary book which takes the reader into a world of obsession and mystery...The Folding Star is lit by insight and humour'' Evening Standard Edward Manners - thirty three and disaffected - escapes to a Flemish city in search of a new life. Almost at once he falls in love with seventeen-year-old Luc, and is introduced to the twilight world of the 1890s Belgian painter Edgard Orst. ‘A generous pinch of true wit’ Sunday Times

Winner of the Man Booker Prize Named a Best Book of the Century by The New York Times Book Review International Bestseller From acclaimed author Alan Hollinghurst, a sweeping novel about class, sex, and money during four extraordinary years of change and tragedy. In the summer of 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens: conservative Member of Parliament Gerald, his wealthy wife Rachel, and their two children, Toby-whom Nick had idolized at Oxford-and Catherine, who is highly critical of her family''s assumptions and ambitions. As the boom years of the eighties unfold, Nick, an innocent in the world of politics and money, finds his life altered by the rising fortunes of this glamorous family. His two vividly contrasting love affairs, one with a young black man who works as a clerk and one with a Lebanese millionaire, dramatize the dangers and rewards of his own private pursuit of beauty, a pursuit as compelling to Nick as the desire for power and riches among his friends. Richly textured, emotionally charged, disarmingly comic, this is a major work by one of our finest writers.

Een jonge homoseksuele aristocraat schrijft de memoires van een 83-jarige homoseksuele lord met wie hij bevriend was geraakt.

Nick Guest, fils d''un petit antiquaire de province et brillant boursier d''Oxford, s''installe à Londres pour mener à bien sa thèse de littérature. Il loue une chambre dans l''hôtel particulier des parents de son ami Toby Fedden, et entre dans l''intimité de la famille : Gerald, le père, un ambitieux député tory, Rachel, la mère, sœur d''un baron fortuné, et Catherine, leur fille maniaco-dépressive. Nick se pose comme le spectateur fasciné d''une société où dominent le faste et l''insouciance, un univers où les héritiers des grandes familles, les ladies désœuvrées et les conservateurs règnent en maîtres. Voici donc la fresque flamboyante du Londres des années Thatcher, quand ascension sociale rimait avec hédonisme et égoïsme. Emporté dans ce tourbillon, Nick découvre la vie facile, le pouvoir, la cocaïne et l''amour - dans les bras d''un employé municipal noir, puis dans ceux du fils d''un magnat libanais de la grande distribution - avant d''affronter la cruauté d''un monde dont il avait cru, un temps, faire partie.

"The "spell" of the title is both the power of drugs, at the heart of the book, and the "sex-magic" that variously possesses - but then deserts - each of its main characters." -- The Guardian Discover this ‘sparkling celebration of sexual intrigue’ (Telegraph, London) from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty and Our Evenings. The Spell is a comedy of sexual manners that follows the interlocking affairs of four men: Robin, an architect in his late forties, who is trying to build an idyllic life in Dorset with his younger lover, Justin; Robin''s 22 year old son Danny, a volatile beauty who lives for clubbing and casual sex; and the shy Alex, who is Justin''s ex-boyfriend. As each in turn falls under the spell of romance or drugs, country living or rough trade, a richly ironic picture emerges of the clashing imperatives of modern gay life. At once lyrical, sceptical and romantic, The Spell confirms Alan Hollinghurst as one of Britain''s most important novelists.

Na de dood van zijn vriend begint een bijna-vijftiger een relatie met een verwende jongere man, waarbij ook zijn eigen zoon en de ex van zijn nieuwe vriend betrokken raken.

A literary sensation and bestseller both in England and America, The Swimming-Pool Library is an enthralling, darkly erotic novel of homosexuality before the scourge of AIDS; an elegy, possessed of chilling clarity, for ways of life that can no longer be lived with impunity. Impeccably composed and meticulously particular in its observation of everything (Harpers & Queen), it focuses on the friendship of two men: William Beckwith, a young gay aristocrat who leads a life of privilege and promiscuity, and the elderly Lord Nantwich, an old Africa hand, searching for someone to write his biography and inherit his traditions. From the Trade Paperback edition.