Sir Alan James Hollinghurst (born 26 May 1954) is an English novelist, poet, short story writer and translator. He won the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award and the 1994 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2004, he won the Booker Prize for his novel The Line of Beauty. Hollinghurst is credited with having helped gay-themed fiction to break into the literary mainstream through his seven novels since 1988.
Early life and education Hollinghurst was born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, England, only child of bank manager James Hollinghurst, who served in the RAF in the Second World War, and his wife, Elizabeth. He attended Dorset's Canford School.Andrew Anthony, "Alan Hollinghurst: The slow-motion novelist delivers", The Guardian, 11 June 2011.
He studied English at Magdalen College, Oxford, receiving a BA in 1975 and MLitt in 1979. His thesis was on works by three gay writers: Ronald Firbank, E. M. Forster and L. P. Hartley. He house-shared at Oxford with future poet laureate Andrew Motion, and was awarded poetry's Newdigate Prize, a year before Motion. In the late 1970s, Hollinghurst lectured at Magdalen, then at Somerville and Corpus Christi. In 1981, he lectured at UCL, and in 1982 joined The Times Literary Supplement, serving as deputy editor from 1985 to 1990.
Hollinghurst discussed his early life and literary influences at length in a rare interview at home in London, published in The James White Review in 1997–98.Galligan, David. "Beneath the Surface of The Swimming-Pool Library: An Interview with Alan Hollinghurst", The James White Review 14.3 (Fall 1997): 1–7; and "On Hampstead Heath: An Interview with Alan Hollinghurst", The James White Review 15.1 (Winter 1998): 10–13.
Writing
Hollinghurst won the 2004 Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty. His next novel, The Stranger's Child, made the 2011 Booker Prize longlist.
The Guardian has called Hollinghurst "one of the great writers of our time". The Sunday Times has stated "at the sentence level, Hollinghurst remains an English stylist without obvious living equal."
Personal life Hollinghurst is gay and lives in London. In 2018, he lived with the non-binary writer Paul Mendez, though the two are now separated. Hollinghurst previously said: "I'm not at all easy to live with. I wish I could integrate writing into ordinary social life, but I don't seem to be able to. I could when I started [writing]. I suppose I had more energy then. Now I have to isolate myself for long periods."
Awards and honours 1974: Newdigate Prize 1989: Somerset Maugham Award, for The Swimming-Pool Library 1989: Stonewall Book Award, for The Swimming-Pool Library 1994: James Tait Black Memorial Prize, for The Folding Star 1995: Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction, for The Folding Star 1995: Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature 2004: Booker Prize, for The Line of Beauty 2011: Booker Prize, longlist for The Stranger's Child 2011: Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle 2025: David Cohen Prize
Works
Novels The Swimming-Pool Library, 1988, The Folding Star, 1994, The Spell, 1998, The Line of Beauty, 2004, The Stranger's Child, 2011, The Sparsholt Affair, 2017, Our Evenings, 2024,
Short stories "A Thieving Boy" (In Firebird 2: Writing Today. Penguin, 1983) "Sharps and Flats" (In Granta 43. 1993), was incorporated into Hollinghurst's second novel, The Folding Star "Highlights" (In Granta 100. 2007)
Poetry Isherwood is at Santa Monica (Sycamore Broadsheet 22: two poems, hand-printed on a single folded sheet), Oxford: Sycamore Press 1975 Poetry Introduction 4 (ten poems: "Over the Wall", "Nightfall", "Survey", "Christmas Day at Home", "The Drowned Field", "Alonso", "Isherwood is at Santa Monica", "Ben Dancing at Wayland's Smithy", "Convalescence in Lower Largo", "The Well"), Faber and Faber, 1978 Confidential Chats with Boys, Oxford: Sycamore Press, 1982 (based on the book Confidential Chats with Boys by William Lee Howard, MD, 1911, Sydney, Australia) "Mud" (London Review of Books, Vol. 4, No. 19, 21 October 1982)
Translations Bajazet by Jean Racine, Chatto & Windus, 1991, Bérénice and Bajazet by Jean Racine, Faber and Faber, 2012,
As editor New Writing 4 (with A. S. Byatt), 1995, A. E. Housman: Poems Selected by Alan Hollinghurst, Faber and Faber, 2001,
References
External links
includes a "Critical Perspective" section Alan Hollinghurst at The New York Review of Books Alan Hollinghust Profile in The Guardian 2011 radio interview at The Bat Segundo Show