Revealing the Hidden Life.

Damon Galgut talks about his novel Arctic Summer, what drew him to EM Forster, and how Forster’s hidden life brought on his writer’s block.

“I’m fascinated, in a literary sense, by that: what happens if you don’t express what you’re feeling? I’m interested in what’s not said, what’s not acted upon, and the kind of plot that might arise from inaction”

Damon Galgut at Kings Place

Win tickets to see Damon Galgut at a special Gay’s the Word event as well as a copy of his novel Arctic Summer.

[rating=5]
368 pages • Atlantic Books • March 06, 2014 [HB]
Damon Galgut’s remarkable novel Arctic Summer imagines the life of the great novelist E.M. Forster and the conflicts that led him to write A Passage to India.

“Forster knew when his great work had been completed, and the wonder in Damon Galgut’s Arctic Summer is that it enables the reader to feel both the triumph as well as the pain at the heart of this conflict. “

E.M. Forster

The editor selects E.M. Forster for Polari Magazine’s list of LGBT Heroes. For UK LGBT History Month 2012.

Written in 1913-1914, Maurice is the story of a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality. It was passed amongst friends, yet it remained a secret, first because it would have been almost impossible to publish, and then because Forster guarded that secret, despite repeated attempts by Christopher Isherwood to have him publish.

[rating=4]
198 pages • Penguin • 1971

This pre-WW1 novel, finished in 1914 yet not published until 1971, is a great work about the struggle of Maurice Hall to come to terms with his sexuality.

In 1911 Forster wrote in his diary of his “weariness of the only subject that I both can and may treat – the love of men for women and vice versa”. In Maurice Forster tackled the subject of homosexuality and assessed what it meant. Maurice is as pioneering a book now as it was then.

[rating=4]
198 pages • Penguin • 1971

This pre-WW1 novel, finished in 1914 yet not published until 1971, is a great work about the struggle of Maurice Hall to come to terms with his sexuality.

In 1911 Forster wrote in his diary of his “weariness of the only subject that I both can and may treat – the love of men for women and vice versa”. In Maurice Forster tackled the subject of homosexuality and assessed what it meant. Maurice is as pioneering a book now as it was then.

Maurice, the book that helped me to understand my sexuality

How the book, following on from the film, changed the life of William Summers.

Maurice is not a great film. It is not even as great a book as Forster’s others. Yet at the age of sixteen I found it to be revolutionary.