Alan Hollinghurst’s masterly exploration of English culture, taste and attitudes over a century of change. Powerful, absorbing and richly comic.

In the late summer of 1913, George Sawle brings his Cambridge friend Cecil Valance, a charismatic young poet, to visit his family home. The weekend will link the families forever, having the most lasting impact on George’s 16-year-old sister, Daphne. As the decades pass, Daphne and those around her endure startling changes in fortune and circumstance, and the events of that long-ago summer become part of a legendary story, retold and interpreted in different ways by successive generations.

Longlisted
The Man Booker Prize 2011
Published by
Picador
Publication date
Alan Hollinghurst

Alan Hollinghurst

About the Author

Born in Stroud, England, Alan Hollinghurst is a novelist, poet, short story writer and translator.
More about Alan Hollinghurst

Other nominated books by Alan Hollinghurst

The Line of Beauty
Prize winner
The Folding Star