Tiepolo Blue

Longlisted for the Authors' Club First Novel Award

'Divine . . . the smart, sexy read you need' Evening Standard

An exquisite debut novel. 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.

Exiled from his university position for an inexcusable blunder, art historian Don Lamb flees to London, a city alive with sex and creativity. There, over the course of a long, hot summer, as he is immersed in the anarchic art and gay scenes of the mid-90s, Don sees his carefully curated life irrevocably changed. But his epiphany is also 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.

'Delicious unease and pervasive threat give this assured first novel great singularity and a kind of gothic edge' Michael Donkor, Guardian

'Wildly enjoyable . . . A novel that combines formal elegance with gripping storytelling' Financial Times