
Published: 25/01/2022

A Sicilian aristocrat and musician and his younger American wife divulge their pasts to one another in this gloriously fresh and bold tale about desire and ageing, the needs of the body and thsoe of the heart, from the author of A Saint from Texas.
A daring, category-confounding and ruthlessly funny novel from Edmund White, exploring polyamory and bisexuality, ageing and love.
Sicilian aristocrat and musician Ruggero, and his younger American wife, Constance, agree to break their marital silence and write their Confessions. Until now they had a ban on speaking about the past, since transparency had wrecked their previous marriages. As the two take turns reading the memoirs they've written about their lives, Constance reveals her multiple marriages to older men, and Ruggero details the affairs he's had with men and women across his lifetime - most importantly his passionate affair with the author Edmund White.
A searing, scintillating take on physical beauty and its inevitable decline, A Previous Life pushes for a broader understanding of sexual orientation and explores the themes of love and age through numerous eyes, hearts and minds. Delightful, irreverent, and experimental, A Previous Life proves once more why White is considered a master of American literature.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN: 9781526632241
Number of pages: 288
Weight: 558 g
Dimensions: 234 x 153 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Elegant, erudite, raunchy and fun, America's great Man of Letters is working at the top of his form, giving us a pair of portraits hung against the pattern of history. What a joy to read this master of prose and invention!' - Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less
'The best book in Edmund White's long and extraordinary career' - Benjamin Moser, author of Sontag: Her Life and Work
'White's project, as always, is to show us the human: the human body as defined by its urges and needs, and the human heart as it evolves through time and experience. In A Previous Life, he also gives us daring experiments of form, of autofiction, and of storytelling. Fresh and inventive and wise.' - Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers
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“A married couple's confessional”
A married couple, Ruggero and Constance, confess their lives and loves before they knew each other. On themes of sexuality and aging.
A Previous Life is explicit and humorous, but off-balance. Ruggero’s narcissistic...
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“A curious read”
This is a very curious novel in that it is difficult to classify..Yes it will be compartmentalised in to the LGBTQ+ category or contemporary fiction but to fully describe it is a challenge. The initial premise is the... More
“Clever, sexy and tragic”
This book is at turns both hilarious and deeply sad, charting the relationships between many characters, not least Edmund White himself, who appears as a character, and, at one point, so does this novel.
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