Tiepolo Blue

Longlisted for the Authors' Club First Novel Award, this exquisite debut novel is a mid-life coming-of-age story charting one man's sexual awakening and his spectacular fall from grace in 1990s London. For fans of Allan Hollinghurst and Edward St Aubyn, the story follows art historian Don Lamb, who is exiled from his university position for an inexcusable blunder. He flees to London, a city alive with sex and creativity. Over the course of a long, hot summer, as he immerses himself in the anarchic art and gay scenes of the mid-90s, Don sees his carefully curated life irrevocably changed. His epiphany becomes a reckoning as his unexamined past is revealed to him in a devastating new light. Intense and atmospheric, Tiepolo Blue traces Don's turbulent awakening and his desperate flight from art into life. Critics have praised it for its delicious unease and pervasive threat, giving this assured first novel great singularity and a kind of gothic edge. It is described as wildly enjoyable, combining formal elegance with gripping storytelling.