The Swimming-Pool Library

by Alan Hollinghurst

Out on the prowl for sexual encounters, Will Beckwith quite unexpectedly finds himself saving the life of elderly Lord Charles Nantwich, who then employs Will to write his biography. As Will embarks on the task, he finds unexpected and fascinating parallels between the life of the old lord and his own. Alan Hollinghurst's first novel was popular in both England and America, praised for its frank treatment of homosexuality and its lyrically erotic writing.

Editions of The Swimming-Pool Library

	ISBN 9780679722564	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Vintage Books	Date 1989	Price $1.07	Good
	ISBN 9780394570259	Binding/Format Hardcover	Publisher Random House Inc	Date 1988	Price $2.99	Fair

Publisher Notes

The Swimming-Pool Library is an enthralling, darkly erotic novel of homosexuality before the scourge of AIDS; an elegy, possessed of chilling clarity, for ways of life that can no longer be lived with impunity. The book focuses on two men: William Beckwith, a young gay aristocrat who leads a life of privilege and promiscuity, and the elderly Lord Nantwich, an old Africa hand, searching for someone to write his biography and inherit his traditions."The Swimming-Pool Library beautifully welds the standard conventions of fiction to a tale of modern transgressions. It tells of impurities with shimmering elegance, of complexities with a camp-fired wit and of truths with a fiction's solid grace."--New York Times Book Review