麻豆社

The new novel from the internationally acclaimed winner of the Booker Prize, Alan Hollinghurst.

Dave Win, the son of a British dressmaker and a Burmese man he鈥檚 never met, is thirteen when he wins a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities lie ahead, despite the vicious bullying of his wealthy classmates. Worst of these is the brutish Giles Hadlow, whose parents sponsored the scholarship and who seem to prefer Dave to their ruthless son.

Our Evenings follows Dave from the 1960s through to the Pandemic: as a working-class brown child in a decidedly white institution; a young man discovering queer culture; a talented actor on the road with an experimental theatre 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鈥檚 orbit are the Hadlows. Estranged from his parents, Giles directs his privilege into a career as a powerful right-wing politician, whose reactionary vision for England threatens Dave鈥檚 own stability. And finally, as the Covid Pandemic hits, the two men鈥檚 lives and values will collide in a cruel shock of violence.

Today: as Dave continues to negotiate life at boarding school, his mother seems to have found a rather dazzling new friend in Esme Croft...

Reader: Steve John Shepherd is an actor of English, Burmese and Chinese ancestry. He is best known for his TV roles in This Life and East Enders.
Writer: Alan Hollinghurst is an acclaimed English novelist, who won the 2004 Booker Prize for his novel The Line of Beauty.
Abridger: Richard Hamilton
Producer: Justine Willett