Fiction, Fiction Subjects

While England sleeps

Name: While England sleeps
Author: David Leavitt
ISBN: 9780395752869

by David Leavitt

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Overview

David Leavitt has earned high praise for his empathetic portrayal of human sexuality and the complexities of intimate relationships. Now, with While England Sleeps, available for the first time in two years, Leavitt moves beyond precisely controlled domestic drama to create a historical novel, one that has greater breadth and resonance than anything he has written before. Set against the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe, While England Sleeps tells the story of a love affair between the aristocratic young British writer Brian Botsford, who thinks homosexuality is something he will outgrow, and Edward Phelan, a sensitive and idealistic working-class employee of the London Underground and a Communist party member. When the strains of class difference, sexual taboo, and Brian's ambivalence impel Edward to volunteer to fight against Franco in Spain, Brian pursues him across Europe and into the violent chaos of war.

Leavitt has earned high praise for his empathetic portrayal of human sexuality and the complexities of intimate relationships. In While England Sleeps, available for the first time in two years, he moves beyond precisely contr olled domestic drama to create a historical novel, set against the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe, that tells a story of love and the violent chaos of war.

About the Author, David Leavitt

David Leavitt's first collection of stories, Family Dancing, was published when he was just twenty-three and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Prize. The Lost Language of Cranes was made into a BBC film, and While England Sleeps was short-listed for the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize. With Mark Mitchell, he coedited The Penguin Book of Short Stories, Pages Passed from Hand to Hand, and cowrote Italian Pleasures. Leavitt is a recipient of fellowships from both the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He divides his time between Italy and Florida.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The author of The Lost Language of Cranes offers a departure in both format (the narrative is told in flashback) and setting (the milieu is Spain and Europe) in his latest novel, a haunting reminiscence with faint echoes of E. M. Forster's Maurice . As in that earlier gay-themed story, a young man from Britain's upper class falls in love with a youth beneath his station. Events here, however, are exacerbated by world events: the roiling background of the Spanish Civil War in 1936-37 as recalled in 1978 by Brian Botsford, a novelist and erstwhile lover of Edward Phelan, a ticket-taker in the London underground. The young Brian, wary of his homosexuality at a time when the word was scarcely spoken, shares his digs with 20-year-old Edward but engages in a desultory heterosexual affair as well. Edward discovers the liaison and flees England to join the Loyalists in Spain. Brian's realization of what he has lost leads to the book's most wrenching segment: his arduous attempts to secure the release of his friend, who has been jailed after trying to desert. Leavitt captures his protagonists' youthful ardor--both amatory and political--with an understated style that carries the reader as the story builds in intensity. The air of doomed romance permeates but never overwhelms the book; this is a finely crafted melodrama in the best sense of the word. Major ad/promo; author tour. (Oct.)

From Barnes & Noble

Set against the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe, this historical novel tells the story of a love affair between Brian Botsford, an upper-class young writer, and Edward Phelan, an idealistic employee of the London Underground and a Communist Party member. Includes a preface by the author. "A haunting & evocative novel..."-- San Francisco Chronicle.