Gay Modern Classics S.
2 total works
Francis King's 1970 novel "A Domestic Animal" is the story of Antonio Valli, a brilliant young Italian philosopher, who arrives to do a year's research at a well-to-do university. He lodges with Dick Thompson, a successful middle-aged novelist, and his good looks and impulsive yet immensely likeable character soon have Dick captivated. Valli is someone who needs to be admired and loved and has an insatiable craving for attention from everyone he meets; he needs an audience to perform to and he finds this at the university, but especially in Dick's company. It is not long before Dick Thompson has fallen completely in love with his charming - but very heterosexual - lodger. What follows is an ill-fated relationship that can only end in disaster, but in "A Domestic Animal", King has created a novel of bitter longing and painful complexities. 'Few English novelists have written with more might and assurance ...' - "Spectator".
First published in 1956, under the pseudonym "Frank Cauldwell", this accomplished comedy of manners is set among British expatriates and exotic locals in a Greece still undiscovered by tourism. Written with an infectious enjoyment and good humour, the story of the flamboyant and temperamental Colonel Theodore Grecos and his devotion to the completely unsophisticated Goetz Joachim provides Francis King with ample scope for his mastery of ironic observation. In the Introduction to this edition, the author explains how The Firewalkers came to be written, born out of "the exhilarating sense of liberation that came to me on first setting foot in Athens".