Francis King

© Miriam Berkley

Francis King (1923– 2011) was born in Switzerland, spent his childhood in India, and was educated in England. While still an undergraduate at Oxford, he completed his first novel, The Dark Tower, which was published in 1946. He worked for the British Council for 15 years—in Italy, Greece, Finland, and Japan successively—while also regularly publishing novels, poems, and short stories. In 1966, he returned to England and became a full-time writer and critic. He published more than 50 books, the accolades for which include the Somerset Maugham Award, the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Prize, and the Golden PEN Award for a Lifetime’s Distinguished Service to Literature. Twice nominated for the Booker Prize, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and President of PEN International.

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A Domestic Animal
A Domestic Animal
$19.00

Francis King

Foreword by Rumaan Alam

“A compact, intricately patterned story of unrequited erotic obsession, focused on the relationship between a closeted English novelist and a beautiful Italian philosopher  . . . Among the novel’s daring ideas is its suggestion that closetedness and English taciturnity are part of a common condition, each an art of concealment.” —Charlie Tyson, Harper’s Magazine

A witty, heartbreaking tale of unrequited love by “one of the finest and most remarkable of English novelists of our time.” (The Scotsman)

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Rumaan Alam on the 1970 novel "worth writing twice."
Rumaan Alam on the 1970 novel "worth writing twice."

I expected A Domestic Animal to be a document of gay life in a benighted past. It isn’t, exactly. The American Psychiatric Association notoriously considered homosexuality a pathology until 1973. Dick does them one better; maybe love is a private experience by definition, maybe—gay or straight—it’s a disease without a cure.