Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovar [Hardcover]

Ranging from figures such as Thomas Mann and Oscar Wilde to Francis Bacon and Pedro Almodovar, this is an illuminating study of the personalities behind the work and the effect of their sexuality upon their lives.

Colm Toibin looks at the life and work of some of the greatest and most influential artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, figures in the main whose homosexuality remained hidden or oblique for much of their lives. Either by choice or necessity, being gay seemed to come second for many of these writers. Yet in their privates lives, and also in the spirit of their work, the laws of desire changed everything for them and made all the difference. Ranging from figures such as Oscar Wilde, born in the 1850s, to Pedro Almodovar, born a hundred years later, this book studies how a changing world altered lives in ways both subtle and serious. Colm Toibin interweaves close reading of the work with detailed analysis of the personality behind the work to illuminating effect.

In Love in a Dark Time, Colm Tóibín looks at the life and work of some of the greatest and most influential artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His subjects range from figures such as Oscar Wilde, born in the 1850s, to Pedro Almodóvar, born nearly a hundred years later. Tóibín studies how a changing world impacted on the lives of people who, on the whole, kept their homosexuality hidden, and reveals that the laws of desire changed everything for them, both in their private lives and in the spirit of their work. ‘Tóibín treats his subject with confidence and authority, both of which attributes are only strengthened by his moderation of tone and the depth of his compassion. He writes with rare tenderness of figures as disparate as Elizabeth Bishop and Francis Bacon, Thomas Mann and Roger Casement, Thom Gunn and Pedro Almodóvar’ John Banville, Irish Times ‘Such readings are crucial, for it is only when homosexuality is removed from the margins and placed at the very heart of the cultural canon that the world predicted by Tóibín in which “being gay will no longer involve difficulty and discrimination” will come to pass’ Michael Arditti, The Times ‘Tóibín writes with high-voltage restraint; his sentences are masterfully devoid of trickery . . . He is tuned in to the silent language of families, the messages that are unspoken and slip past the rest of the world, landing deep into the hearts of those who understand’ Robert Sullivan, Vogue --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Colm Toibin was born in lreland in 1955. He is the author of four novels, The South, The Heather Blazing, The Story of the Night and The Blackwater Lightship, which was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize. His non-fiction includes Bad Blood, Homage to Barcelona and The Sign of the Cross. His work ahs been translated into seventeen languages. He lives in Dublin.