The Strangers Child

Winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the NBCC award. From Alan Hollinghurst the acclaimed author of The Sparsholt Affair The Line of Beauty is a sweeping novel about class sex and money during four extraordinary years of change and tragedy. In the summer of 1983 twentyyearold Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens conservative Member of Parliament Gerald his wealthy wife Rachel and their two children Tobywhom Nick had idolized at Oxfordand Catherine who is highly critical of her familys assumptions and ambitions. As the boom years of the eighties unfold Nick an innocent in the world of politics and money finds his life altered by the rising fortunes of this glamorous family. His two vividly contrasting love affairs one with a young black clerk and one with a Lebanese millionaire dramatize the dangers and rewards of his own private pursuit of beauty a pursuit as compelling to Nick as the desire for power and riches among his friends. Richly textured emotionally charged disarmingly comic this is a major work by one of our finest writers.