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‘Full of kindness, even tenderness… He is a brilliant writer: opulently gossipy as few are these days, but also truthful, witty, wise and stoical’ Rachel Cooke, Observer

‘Everett is a brilliant writer – funny, waspish, warm and seductive’ Camilla Long, The Times

Richly imagined and extraordinarily affecting… Everett is a terrific storyteller’ Hadley Freeman, Sunday Times

Eight stories of love and loss, drama and glamour, hope and rejection, from a writer at the height of his powers.

In Rupert Everett’s first, glorious collection of stories, he takes us on an exhilarating journey with a cast of extraordinary characters. A blackly humorous story of a chaotic and emotional funeral in Paris. Oscar Wilde’s last night in Paris, vividly evocative, unflinching and elegiac. A Russian-American countess who confronts sex and age in a Wiltshire teashop. The ferociously unforgiving life of an L.A. talent agency and the unexpected twist that launches a completely different kind of career. The deathbed confession of a woman who left home for 1850s India, never to return. A story of emigration, love and grief. And a beautifully evocative and touching portrayal of Proust’s creative life and his childhood.

A brilliantly witty, funny and tender collection of stories that draws on the wealth of film and TV ideas Rupert Everett has created over the course of his career, The American No will delight and surprise his many fans.

‘Rupert Everett is one of my favourite writers. He’s brilliantly witty, acutely perceptive and highly sensitive, and his writing is incredibly good. His stories are both moving and tender, often outrageous, and funny too. A gifted storyteller’ Santa Montefiore

Publisher Review

Everett has a flair for historical fiction…What were once ideas for screenplays have become stories – and are all the better for the years of marinating. There is some real depth and richness here, as well as a sharp critique of the mores of La-La Land — Erica Wagner * Tatler * The joy of Everett as a writer has always been his pitilessly clear-eyed perspective… every sentence [he] writes rings with his personality, and it’s a personality that has always been irresistible * Hadley Freeman, Guardian, praise for Rupert Everett * Everett is a deliciously gifted writer. Nothing and no one escapes his attention…However wasteful and capricious his first profession, we know that he is perfectly safe. The blank page will henceforth always be his. He is a writer to his (aching) bones * Rachel Cooke, Observer, praise for Rupert Everett * His resilient energy, sharp-eyed intelligence and keen sense of the ridiculous, as well as his capacity for short-term enjoyment of life’s sensual pleasures, infuse his writing with a warm glow…the sheer force of his personality is irresistible and there isn’t a dull moment * Telegraph, praise for Rupert Everett * A supremely gifted writer * Lynn Barber, The Times, praise for Rupert Everett * What makes this autobiography a (novelistic) masterpiece is the way he is acutely aware of the melancholia and pain that are the other side of hedonism’s coin * Daily Telegraph, praise for Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins * Most of all he is just a very good writer indeed * Julie Burchill, Observer, praise for Vanished Years *