The New Life
An enthralling novel about forbidden desire set against the backdrop of the Oscar Wilde trial
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:12th Jan '23
£16.99
Available for immediate dispatch.
This hardback is available in other editions too:
- Paperback£9.99(9781529919714)
- Paperback - Signed Edition£9.99(9781529919714-S)

* 'Subtle, sexy and beautifully crafted' Sarah Waters * 'Enthralling' Sunday Times * 'Electrifying'Anne Enright * 'Filled with nuance and tenderness' Colm Tóibín * 'Virtuoso' Guardian * 'A very fine new writer' Kate Atkinson * 'Powerful' Telegraph *
'It was as if this man in front of him were an invisible door and he was paused on the threshold'
London, 1894. John and Henry have a vision for a new way of life. But as the Oscar Wilde trial ignites public outcry, everything they long for could be under threat.
After a lifetime navigating his desires, John, married to Catherine, has met Frank. Meanwhile Henry's wife Edith has fallen for Angelica.
A shared vision for the future brings John and Henry together to write a revolutionary book in defiance of convention and the law.
Their daring book threatens to throw John and Henry, and all those around them, into danger. How far should they go to win personal freedoms? And how high a price are they willing to pay for a new way of living?
**Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2023**
**Winner of the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature 2023**
**GRANTA Best Young Novelist 2023**
**Longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize 2023**
'Tom Crewe inhabits the minds, lives and bodies of his visionary late-nineteenth century characters with almost eerie precision and intensity. The result is subtle, sexy and beautifully crafted - a wonderful book' * Sarah Waters *
Completely engrossed by this fascinating story of gay life in the London of the 1890’s. Beautifully written with fantastically complicated characters -- Graham Norton
'Clever and kind, The New Life is a book of wonderful generosity and compassion' * Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam *
It is a pleasure to discover a young novelist with such a wise sensibility - and also, one who can construct such convincing characters. * Sunday Times *
This is a corker... one of the literary debuts of the year * The Times, *Books to Look Out For 2023* *
The New Life is filled with nuance and tenderness, steeped in the atmosphere of late nineteenth century London, a world on the brink of social and sexual change. Tom Crewe's brilliant novel dramatizes the relationship between the visionary and the brave, charting the lives of men and women who inspired not only political progress but an entire new way of living and loving. -- Colm Tóibín
'A beautifully written debut set in Victorian London... some of the best writing on desire I've read' * Douglas Stuart *
[Tom Crewe is] a very fine new writer -- Kate Atkinson
Electrifying. Tom Crewe's forensic love of the physical puts the body back into history and makes the past a living, changing place -- Anne Enright
An excellent debut . . . It's extraordinary to think that this impeccably crafted, lyrically phrased and muscular book is Crewe's first . . . a brilliant evocation of the radical politics of turn-of-the-century Britain * Michael Donkor, Guardian *
Emotionally vivid and erotically charged,The New Life brilliantly reveals a 'seething and boiling' world of 'loneliness and anger and lust,' as Crewe's complicated, compelling protagonists battle the restrictive mores of the day * Daily Mail *
Powerful themes and lovingly polished prose . . . a fictional debut of rare quality and promise * Daily Telegraph *
Intense and precise . . . It is refreshing to find any contemporary novel, let alone a debut, which is first and foremost one of ideas * Financial Times *
[An] excellent new novel * Independent *
'[An] intricate and finely crafted debut novel . . . The New Life brims with intelligence and insight,impressed with all the texture (and fog) of fin de siècle London' * New York Times *
'Crewe distinguishes himself both as novelist and as historian . . . He has, more unusually, found a prose that can accommodate everything from the lofty to the romantic and the shamelessly sexy' * New Yorker *
Unflinchingly bold . . . Crewe's language is striking in its originality, his protagonists are colourful and passionate, and their principles are brilliantly drawn * i paper *
Sexy, cerebral and moving * Mail on Sunday *
'Atmospheric . . . Extraordinary . . . Crewe's taut prose is shot through with descriptive vividness' -- James Cahill * TLS *
Exhilarating . . . An adroit novel of ethics * New Statesman *
'Lyrical, piercing . . . The New Life is a fine-cut gem, its sentences buffed to a gleam . . . [Crewe's book] brims with élan and feeling, an ode to eros and a lost world, and a warning about the dangers ahead' * Hamilton Cain, Washington Post *
'Crewe deserves applause for his vivid scene-setting . . . There's much to admire in this meticulously researched, boldly envisioned debut' * Prospect *
'Nothing less than remarkable . . . A beautiful, brave book that reminds us of the terrible human cost of bigotry; this is a novel against forgetting' * Michael Schaub, Boston Globe *
'Rich and engrossing . . . blending the graceful ambiguity of literary fiction with the deftness of a page-turner . . . A smart, sensual debut' * Kirkus (starred review) *
A few established novelists continue to write first-class literary fiction on LGBTQ themes... The debut novel by Tom Crewe...reveals a new talent in the field. It is underpinned by extensive research... [with] a great story at its heart. * Literary Review *
ISBN: 9781784744694
Dimensions: 241mm x 163mm x 35mm
Weight: 584g
384 pages