Giovanni's Room
An American in Paris, engaged to one person and in love with another, in Baldwin's shortest novel.
Read our take
The Swimming-Pool Library
by Alan Hollinghurst
Queer freedom in 1980s London meets class, power, loneliness, and the lives that came before it.
- 1988
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeWill is young, wealthy, sexually confident, and living with little of David's hesitation about sleeping with men. Yet loneliness, class, exploitation, and queer history remain impossible to escape.
What's inside
A privileged young man is drawn into another man's history while moving through the pleasures and power structures of queer London.
Why we recommend it
Life after the closet
It asks what changes—and what does not—when sexual freedom expands beyond Baldwin's world.
What this book explores
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
The Line of Beauty
Desire, beauty, class, and conditional acceptance inside wealthy 1980s Britain.
Read our take
A Boy's Own Story
A boy learns shame early and tries every available way to turn himself into someone else.
Read our takeIf you like Alan Hollinghurst
Explore authors with a similar voice, perspective, and influence.
Charles Bukowski
American poet and novelist of Los Angeles rooming houses, racetracks and the post office, who quit his job to write when a publisher offered him a hundred dollars a month. He came to Paris once, in September 1978, drank his way through a live television book programme and walked off the set — and French television has been replaying it ever since.
View author
Claude McKay
Jamaican-born poet and novelist, and one of the essential writers of the Harlem Renaissance. He arrived in Paris from Moscow in 1923 and stayed in France until 1928, writing Home to Harlem there — and forming a low opinion of the rich, white expatriate scene that dominates most accounts of the period. His Paris is the same years as Hemingway's and almost nothing like it.
View author
Martha Gellhorn
War correspondent who covered the Spanish Civil War, D-Day, and conflicts across five more decades; Hemingway's third wife, 1940–1945.
View author
References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document The Swimming-Pool Library, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1The Swimming-Pool Library — Open Library ISBN catalogue
Official recordOpen Library, Internet ArchiveUsed forOpen Library ISBN catalogue used to verify the title, ISBN, and publication metadata.
2The Swimming-Pool Library — Google Books edition record
Official recordGoogle BooksUsed forGoogle Books catalogue record used to cross-check the title and edition metadata.
3The Swimming-Pool Library — Internet Archive ISBN catalogue
Official recordInternet ArchiveUsed forInternet Archive ISBN catalogue used to cross-check the edition and its availability in library holdings.
4The Swimming-Pool Library — Library of Congress books catalogue
Official recordLibrary of CongressUsed forLibrary of Congress books catalogue used to cross-check the bibliographic record by ISBN.
i
Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
Explore more resources