ABSTRACT
Alan Hollinghurst's first novel, The Swimming-Pool Library, was greeted with almost universal acclaim when it was published in 1988 and described by Edmund White as 'the best book on gay life yet written by an English author'. In the fifteen years since The Swimming-Pool Library Hollinghurst has published only two further novels but each, in its very different way, has shown him to be one of the most original fiction writers of his generation. Neatly revealing, among many other things, how the English class system and relationships of power operate in their own way within the subculture, Hollinghurst carries his narrative towards a surprising conclusion in which the conflicts between social position and sexuality are revealed. Infused with Hollinghurst's characteristic brand of sensuality and melancholy irony, "The Folding Star" is like an updated version of Death in Venice, set in the colder and bleaker atmosphere of his unnamed Flemish city.
