At Oxford in the 1940s, the nights are dark. Pitch black. Blackouts, so as not to illuminate any targets for WWII bombers.
The students scuttle and whisper with their flashlights. They stare at David Sparsholt. They conspire to shave when he’ll be standing at the same line of sinks, cocky, aloof, shirtless.
In Alan Hollinghurst’s The Sparsholt Affair, newly released in paperback, a forbidden crush can become like a gene, insinuating itself into the fates of future generations.
This is a world of painters and drunks, scholars and writers. The men long for each other, the women too.
Scandals and wars burst and ripple. Sons become fathers. Homosexuality is decriminalized. Coded glances give way to casually obscene Tumblr pages and Grindr profiles. Still, nobody quite understands anybody else. PLEASE READ
