Booker Prize Winner
The Line of Beauty
by Alan Hollinghurst
Summary
Nick Guest, a young gay aesthete, lodges with the family of a rising Conservative MP through the Thatcher years, navigating love affairs, cocaine, and the gathering shadow of AIDS. Hollinghurst writes with Jamesian precision about class, beauty, and the seductions of power. The book offers a panoramic anatomy of 1980s Britain seen from inside the houses of those who shaped it.
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Historical Context & Significance
The first book with an explicitly gay protagonist to win, praised for its social observation.