Description

‘An extraordinary book which takes the reader into a world of obsession and mystery…The Folding Star is lit by insight and humour’ Evening Standard

Edward Manners – thirty three and disaffected – escapes to a Flemish city in search of a new life. Almost at once he falls in love with seventeen-year-old Luc, and is introduced to the twilight world of the 1890s Belgian painter Edgard Orst.

‘A generous pinch of true wit’ Sunday Times

Publisher Review

'As is typical of the best classics, he has fashioned a universal tale of sexual obsession, love and death out of a particular life' * Marie Claire * 'Even in its sexiest moments, it never loses its intellectual poise. Dry witticisms intersperse sweaty couplings...The Folding Star is a novel of considerable breadth.What gives it its depth is the candour, wit, sensuous immediacy and melancholy intelligence applied to it' -- Peter Kemp * Times Literary Supplement * 'Few writers' prose can throw a party as easily as retire to the library as Hollinghurst's...[He ] is on as fine a form in this novel as his first' -- Tom Shone * Spectator * 'Grand 19th-century fin-de-siecle lusciousness, a seamy 20th-century carnality and a generous pinch of true wit' * Sunday Times *