Publisher's Synopsis
***WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE 2023 FOR POLITICAL FICTION***
Boyd Tonkin, Chair of The Orwell Prize Judges, praised how the book:
…re-imagines the lives of the late Victorian writers Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds in the immediate aftermath of the trials and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde. The fictionalised characters – John and Henry, and their wives Catherine and Edith – are brought to vivid life by Crewe, who writes about their social, intellectual and erotic lives with extraordinary verisimilitude. Wonderfully precise about things that themselves do not always seem appropriate to precision, the novel considers the similarities between desire and intellectual life, which both risk producing things that may ultimately prove abortive or bathetic. Crewe stays brilliantly faithful to the language, the outlook and the conventions of 1890s London even as he shows, and investigates, the distance between then and now. With compassion, lucidity and poise he explores both the creation of new sexual identities and the nature of social activism, as the ideals of liberation tangle with shame, fear and doubt.
London, 1894. After a lifetime navigating his desires, John has found a man who returns his feelings. Meanwhile Henry is sure that his unconventional marriage will bring freedom.
A shared vision for the future brings John and Henry together to write a revolutionary book in defiance of convention and the law.
Their daring book threatens to throw John and Henry, and all those around them, into danger. How far should they go to win personal freedoms? And how high a price are they willing to pay for a new way of living?
A beautifully written debut set in Victorian London... some of the best writing on desire I've read. - Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain
