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Publisher's Summary

Short-listed for the 1994 Booker Prize

Edward Manners - 33 and disaffected - escapes to a Flemish city in search of a new life. Almost at once he falls in love with 17-year-old Luc and is introduced to the twilight world of the 1890s Belgian painter Edgard Orst.
©2018 Alan Hollinghurst (P)2018 Macmillan Digital Audio

Critic Reviews

"An extraordinary book which takes the reader into a world of obsession and mystery...The Folding Star is lit by insight and humour." (Evening Standard)

"As is typical of the best classics, he has fashioned a universal tale of sexual obsession, love and death out of a particular life." (Marie Claire)

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  • Allan Robb-McLeod
  • 11-07-2018

Another Hollinghurst triumph

While not my favourite of Alan Hollinghurst's novels, The Folding Star contains some of his best writing. I found myself not particularly interested the sub-plot regarding the Flemish artist but a flashback of the protagonist's first love was so sublime that it left me gasping for more. I will definitely revisit The Folding Star.

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  • Anonymous User
  • 01-08-2020

Sam West’s Accents

Hollinghurst writes literature not mere novels, and Sam West is a consummate actor. I’ve listened to both of his Hollinghurst readings (the other being The Swimming Pool Library). My only gripe is that whenever he’s voicing black characters - even native British ones - he adopts a bestial semi-patois accent which robustly pushes the bounds of bigotry. Why can’t he have them speaking like actual human beings the way God and Hollinghurst intended?

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