The Master
Synopsis
In January 1895, Henry James anticipates the opening of his first play in London. He has never been so vulnerable, nor felt so deeply unsuited to the public gaze. When the production fails, he returns, chastened, to his writing desk. The result is a string of masterpieces, but they are produced at a high personal cost. Colm Tóibín captures the exquisite anguish of a man whose artistic gifts made his career a triumph but whose private life was haunted by loneliness and longing, and whose sexual identity remained unresolved. Henry James circulated in the grand parlours and palazzos of Europe, he was lauded and admired, yet his attempts at intimacy inevitably failed him and those he tried to love.
Author Biography
Colm Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford in 1955 and educated at University College Dublin. He is the author of five novels: The South, (1990) winner of The Irish Times Literature Prize in 1991; The Heather Blazing, winner of the Encore Award for the best second novel in 1992; The Story of the Night (1997); The Blackwater Lightship (1999), shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize; and The Master (2004), shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Novel of the Year and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger in France. Tóibín’s books have been translated into twenty-five languages.
