British · b. 1954
Alan Hollinghurst is a Booker Prize–winning English novelist celebrated for the elegance of his prose and his richly observed explorations of gay life, class, and English society, author of The Line of Beauty and The Swimming-Pool Library.
Alan Hollinghurst made his mark with his debut, The Swimming-Pool Library (1988), a landmark in the literary depiction of gay life. He has since built a reputation as one of the finest prose stylists in contemporary English fiction.
His novel The Line of Beauty won the Booker Prize in 2004, a meticulously crafted portrait of 1980s Thatcherite Britain seen through the experience of a young gay man. His later novels, including The Stranger’s Child, continue his exploration of memory, sexuality, class, and the texture of English social life across the twentieth century.
Hollinghurst is admired for the beauty and precision of his writing and his subtle, intelligent engagement with desire, art, and history.
by Alan Hollinghurst
Nick Guest, a gay Oxford graduate, lodges with the politically connected Fedden family in Notting Hill from 1983 to 1987 — the years of Thatcher's ascendancy, the AIDS crisis, and the cocaine boom. The novel is about beauty, class, and the illusion of belonging.
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by Alan Hollinghurst
Will Beckwith, 25, aristocratic and promiscuous, spends the last summer before AIDS transforms gay London life. He is asked by an elderly peer, Lord Nantwich, to write his biography — and discovers a connection between Nantwich's past and his own grandfather's role in the persecution of gay men.
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Alan Hollinghurst's complete bibliography in order — from The Swimming-Pool Library and The Line of Beauty to The Stranger's Child. Best starting points.
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Where to start with Alan Hollinghurst — whether to begin with The Line of Beauty, The Swimming Pool Library, or another novel. A complete reading guide.
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