The Swimming-Pool Library

Alan Hollinghurst First published 1994

About this book

A literary sensation and bestseller in both England and America, The Swimming-Pool Library is an enthralling, darkly erotic novel of gay life before the scourge of AIDS; an elegy, possessed of chilling clarity, for ways of life that can no longer be lived with total 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.

Subjects

aristocracy (social class)
collection:stonewall_book_award=pre-1990_winner
england, fiction
english literature
fiction
fiction, general
fiction, lgbtq+, gay
gay men
gay men, fiction
interpersonal relations
lambda literary awards
lambda literary award winner
lgbtq novels
london (england), fiction
male homosexuality
sexuality
stonewall book awards