Böcker av Neil Bartlett

At three in the morning, to the sound of slow music on the piano, in the darkest corner of the best bar in the city, two lovers fall into each others arms - one is older and wiser: one is just nineteen. Then follow the rites and ceremonies of a love affair and a happy marriage. But this marriage is a marriage between two men.

Pip, a poor village boy, finds two chance meetings set his life on an unexpected course. At the water's edge, he has a terrifying encounter with an escaped convict. In the decaying grandeur of Miss Haversham's house, he falls hopelessly in love with the heartless Estella. When an anonymous benefactor helps him move to Calcutta, the heart of the British Raj, Pip pursues his great expectations and his dream of winning Estella's heart. Relocating Pip's extraordinary journey to nineteenth-century India, this coming-of-age story, evoking some of Dickens' most colourful characters, is faithful to the period of the book and the richness of Dickens' language - a vivid theatrical retelling of a universally loved masterpiece.

Set in the year of the late Queen's coronation, and in the world of variety theatre, Bartlett's fourth novel, tells the story of a small man's triumph over a Goliath. Originally released by Bloomsbury, it gained him a nomination for Stonewall Author of the Year 2014; it is republished with a new introduction by the author.

The author reflects on the links between the homosexual of the 1980s and his counterparts of a century ago--between gay lives today and those of Oscar Wilde, his friends, lovers, and acquaintances.