Couldn't load pickup availability
By Alan Hollinghurst
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker • The Winnipeg Free Press • The Guardian • TIME • The Irish Times • Kirkus Reviews • Publishers Weekly • Slate • A New York Times Notable Book of 2024 • From the internationally acclaimed winner of the Booker Prize, a piercing novel that envisions modern England through the lens of one man’s acutely observed and often unnerving experience, as he struggles with class and race, art and sexuality, love and violence.
"The finest novel yet from one of the great writers of our time." —The Guardian
Did I have a grievance? Most of us, without looking far, could find something that had harmed us, and oppressed us, and unfairly held us back. I tried not to dwell on it, thought it healthier not to, though I’d lived my short life so far in a chaos of privilege and prejudice.
Dave Win, the son of a British dressmaker and a Burmese man he’s never met, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities lie before Dave, even as he is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates, above all that of Giles Hadlow, whose worldly parents sponsored the scholarship and who find in Dave someone they can more easily nurture than their brutish son.
Our Evenings follows Dave from the 1960s on—through the possibilities that remained open for him, and others that proved to be illusory: as a working-class brown child in a decidedly white institution; a young man discovering queer culture and experiencing his first, formative love affairs; a talented but often overlooked actor, on the road with an experimental theater company; and an older Londoner whose late-in-life marriage fills his days with an unexpected sense of happiness and security.
Moving in and out of Dave’s orbit are the Hadlows. Estranged from his parents, who remain close to Dave, Giles directs his privilege into a career as a powerful right-wing politician, whose reactionary vision for England pokes perilous holes in Dave’s stability. And as the novel accelerates towards the present day, the two men’s lives and values will finally collide in a cruel shock of violence.
This is “one of our most gifted writers” (The Boston Globe) sweeping readers from our past to our present through the beauty, pain, and joy of one deeply observed life.
Hardcover, 512 pages
Published by Vintage Canada (Aug 2025)
ISBN-13: 9781039000476
Dimensions: 13.16 x 2.69 x 20.32 cm
Free shipping on Canadian orders over $100. Flat-rate shipping is available for smaller orders and for US customers, with delivery in 1-10 business days. US orders include duties and taxes calculated at checkout. Every order ships in plain, unmarked packaging with no reference to contents, and you'll get a tracking link as soon as it's out the door.
Defective items are covered for 30 days, with select brands warrantied up to 15 years. Due to the personal nature of our products, items are final sale unless defective, no returns or exchanges.
