Our Evenings

'I must confess my devotion immediately: I read every word this man writes. I wait for every new novel and the wait has been worth it: this is gorgeous. I simply love the way this man writes' – Russell T. Davies

Alan Hollinghurst, the Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty, brings us a dark, heartbreaking but wickedly funny portrait of England spanning six decades. It is a story of race and class, theatre and sexuality, love and the cruel shock of violence, from one of the finest writers of our age.

Dave Win is thirteen years old when he first goes to stay with the sponsors of his scholarship at a local boarding school. This weekend, with its games and challenges and surprising encounters, will open up heady new possibilities, even as it exposes him to their son Giles’ envy and violence.

As their lives unfold over the next half a century, the two boys’ careers will diverge dramatically: Dave, a gifted actor struggling against convention and discrimination, Giles an increasingly powerful and dangerous politician.

Our Evenings is the intimate and touching story of Dave Win’s life as a schoolboy and student, his first love affairs, in London, and on the road with an experimental theatre company. Then, a late-life affair, which transforms his sixties with a new sense of happiness and a perilous security.

'The best novel that’s been written about contemporary Britain in the past ten years. It’s funny but desperately moving too' – The Sunday Times