The Traumatic Celebration of Beauty in Alan Hollinghurst’s Fiction

‘The Traumatic Celebration of Beauty in Alan Hollinghurst’s Fiction’ is the first monograph to delve into all the novels published by the writer so far: from his extraordinary debut, ‘The Swimming-Pool Library’ (1988), to ‘The Sparsholt’s Affair’ (2017).

The chapters follow a chronological order in Hollinghurst’s production. However, all of them address the complex interaction of traumatic and celebratory discourses as voiced by gay and queer characters ranging from the twentieth to the early twenty-first century. This timely volume is intended to explore the limits of same-sex desire and identity in Hollinghurst’s six novels drawing on trauma theory and intertextuality.