“From the Man Booker Prize–winning author of
The Line of Beauty: a magnificent, century-spanning saga about a love triangle
that spawns a myth, and a family mystery, across generations.
In the late summer of 1913, George Sawle brings
his Cambridge schoolmate—a handsome,
aristocratic young poet named Cecil Valance—to his family’s modest home outside
London for the
weekend. George is enthralled by Cecil, and soon his sixteen-year-old sister,
Daphne, is equally besotted by him and the stories he tells about Corley Court, the
country estate he is heir to. But what Cecil writes in Daphne’s autograph album
will change their and their families’ lives forever: a poem that, after Cecil
is killed in the Great War and his reputation burnished, will become a
touchstone for a generation, a work recited by every schoolchild in England. Over
time, a tragic love story is spun, even as other secrets lie buried—until,
decades later, an ambitious biographer threatens to unearth them. Rich with
Hollinghurst’s signature gifts—haunting sensuality, delicious wit and exquisite
lyricism—The Stranger’s Child is a tour de force: a masterly novel about the
lingering power of desire, how the heart creates its own history, and how
legends are made.”
