A Domestic Animal
Format:Paperback
Publisher:McNally Jackson Books
Publishing:26th Feb '26
£13.99
This title is due to be published on 26th February, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
A witty, heartbreaking tale of unrequited love by “one of the finest and most remarkable English novelists of our time.” (The Scotsman)
Antonio Valli, a gifted Italian philosopher in his thirties, has left his wife and children behind in Florence for a one-year research fellowship at a provincial English university. Handsome and charming, Antonio is irresistible to men and women both—and he knows it. One who falls under his spell is Dick Thompson, a successful middle-aged novelist from whom Antonio rents a room. For the first time in years, Dick finds himself desperately, passionately in love, but the games the manipulative Italian plays with him throw the older man’s life into chaos.
Published only three years after the decriminalization of homosexuality in the UK, A Domestic Animal is Francis King’s most intimate and daringly autobiographical novel: a “wry, anguished study . . . of love and jealousy [that] is hard to forget” (Robert Baldick, The Daily Telegraph).
“Few English novelists have written with more might and assurance.”
—The Spectator
“A delicate and truly touching story … horribly true to life.”
—Robert Garioch, The Listener
“King is a writer’s writer, his voice is utterly convincing.”
—Beryl Bainbridge
“One of the finest and most remarkable of English novelists of our time.”
—The Scotsman
“He deserves the widest possible readership.”
—Melvyn Bragg, Punch
“No one writes better prose than Francis King.”
—Ruth Rendell
“Witty, poignant, socially and internationally telling, it traps the tragi-comic essence of love that not merely isn’t but can’t be reciprocated.”
—Brigid Brophy
“Wryly tender and painful . . . He is writing about love in all its aspects of greed, devotion, happiness and loss.”
—Janice Elliott, Sunday Telegraph
“The author investigates his chosen examples of emotional blight with sympathy, precision, and immense skill.”
—The Evening Standard
“His writing is like fine china … This book’s strength is its dark stab of feeling.”
—Philip Norman, The Sunday Times
“[Francis King’s] writing is always accomplished and elegant.”
—A. S. Byatt
“A most accomplished writer who commands both deftness and feeling.”
—Christopher Wordsworth, The Guardian
“Francis King commands a noteworthy talent; he is one of a number of contemporary British novelists who deserve the best attention here.”
—The New York Herald Tribune Book Review
“Master of a subtle, melancholy style, rich and understated.”
—Roxanna Robinson, The New York Times Book Review
ISBN: 9781961341708
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
208 pages