The Sparsholt Affair

from the Man Booker Prize winner, the epic literary novel spanning seven transformative decades

By: Alan Hollinghurst

Narrated by: David Dawson

'Call Me By Your Name meets Evelyn Waugh in a gorgeous novel about the generations-long aftershocks of a youthful tryst' — Esquire

From the winner of the Man Booker Prize, a masterly novel that spans seven transformative decades as it plumbs the complex relationships of a remarkable family.

In October 1940, the handsome young David Sparsholt arrives in Oxford. A keen athlete and oarsman, he at first seems unaware of the effect he has on others – particularly on the lonely and romantic Evert Dax, son of a celebrated novelist and destined to become a writer himself. While the Blitz rages in London, Oxford exists at a strange remove: an ephemeral, uncertain place, in which nightly blackouts conceal secret liaisons. Over the course of one momentous term, David and Evert forge an unlikely friendship that will colour their lives for decades to come . . .

Alan Hollinghurst’s sweeping novel evokes the intimate relationships of a group of friends bound together by art, literature and love across three generations. It explores the social and sexual revolutions of the most pivotal years of the past century, whose life-changing consequences are still being played out to this day. Richly observed, disarmingly witty and emotionally charged, The Sparsholt Affair is an unmissable achievement from one of our finest writers.

Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.

'Startling, radical, embedded in tradition but entirely new' - Guardian

'A master storyteller' - John Banville

Critic reviews

Hollinghurst is a master storyteller ... thrilling in the rather awful way that the best Victorian novels are, so that one finds oneself galloping somewhat shamefacedly through the pages in order to discover what happens next. (John Banville)

Hollinghurst can make language do what he wants . . . It makes a lot of contemporary fiction seem thin and underachieving.

Dazzlingly good: the best new novel I’ve read this year. Once again, Hollinghurst is both utterly sumptuous and utterly precise

Mr. Hollinghurst's great gift as a novelist is for social satire as sharp and transparent as glass, catching his quarry from an angle just an inch to the left of the view they themselves would catch in the mantelpiece mirror.

Alan Hollinghurst’s The Sparsholt Affair is startling, radical, embedded in tradition but entirely new in final effect – the novel that other novelists were all talking about this year. (Philip Hensher)

A sweeping and intimate masterpiece, full of sensual pleasures and observational wisdom (Geoff Dyer)

Thrillingly stylish and gripping (Alex Preston)

But for narrative ambition and sheer comic joy, by far the best thing I’ve read this year . . . A novel with brains and heart and balls — the kind you find yourself wanting to read at two speeds at once: very quickly, so that you can get on to the next page, and very slowly, so that you can linger over each beautifully crafted sentence. He’s a writer who makes every word sing (Robert Douglas-Fairhurst)

Audacious, ambitious . . . an absorbingly complex novel reaching across seven decades . . . Hollinghurst's prose delights

Beautiful; moving . . . he writes with subtlety and sympathy; wisdom and understanding

A highlight of Hollinghurst’s career, and one of the best books of the year . . . a true master

My favourite living novelist (Charlotte Mendelson)

Richly textured and alive with ironic wit . . . An ambitious novel of family, sexuality and art

Captures the changing nature of the homosexual experience as the country moves from shame and criminality to openness [and] dating apps

Alluring, virtuosic, cinematic . . . The traditional novel form seems as pleasurable and humanly true as ever in his hands

Deeply pleasurable . . . written with poise, lucidity and pathos

A wonder, full of wit and tenderness . . . there is no better stylist alive [than] Hollinghurst

Perhaps Hollinghurst’s most beautiful novel yet—a book full of glorious sentences by the greatest prose stylist writing in English today . . . An unashamedly readable novel, undoubtedly the work of a master

It’s not often that readers see such a fundamental rethinking of what fiction can do, and rarer still that the result is such a joy (Philip Hensher)

Inter generational tale both interesting and poignant

Alan Hollinghurst did not disappoint but paints a sensitive portrait of a father, son and granddaughter in a well observed narrative.