The Line of Beauty cover art

The Line of Beauty

Winner of the Booker Prize

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 Months Free

£5.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Get this deal
Offer ends on 15 July 2026 at 11:59 BST.
More purchase options

The Line of Beauty

By: Alan Hollinghurst
Narrated by: Alex Jennings
Get this deal

£5.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £12.84

Buy Now for £12.84

Winner of the Man Booker Prize, The Line of Beauty is a classic novel about class, politics and sexuality in Margaret Thatcher's 1980s Britain.

There was the soft glare of the flash – twice – three times – a gleaming sense of occasion, the gleam floating in the eye as a blot of shadow, his heart running fast with no particular need of courage as he grinned and said, 'Prime Minister, would you like to dance?'

In the summer of 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the wealthy Feddens: Gerald, an ambitious Tory MP, his wife Rachel and their children Toby and Catherine. Innocent of politics and money, Nick is swept up into the Feddens' world and an era of endless possibility, all the while pursuing his own private obsession with beauty.

The Line of Beauty is Alan Hollinghurst's Man Booker Prize-winning masterpiece. It is a novel that defines a decade, exploring with peerless style a young man's collision with his own desires, and with a world he can never truly belong to.

 Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Romance Satire Heartfelt Witty
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1

The Pride List of Queer Storytelling

To mark Pride 2023 Audible teamed up with non-profit organisation, Out on the Page, supporter and champion of LGBTQIA+ writers and writing, to release an extensive Pride List of Queer Storytelling. Featuring contributions from some of the UK’s most important and exciting voices from the LGBTQIA+ community, this audiobook is one of the many featured on the list that is available to listen to on Audible.
Explore the list

Critic reviews

A classic of our times . . . The work of a great English stylist in full maturity. A masterpiece
As good as the English novel gets. Almost every sentence is a thing of beauty
There is something memorable on every page . . . there is much to savour in The Line of Beauty, not least its humour, a shivering yet morally exacting satire that leaves no character untouched
Hollinghurst can make language do what he wants . . . It makes a lot of contemporary fiction seem thin and underachieving. A brilliantly comical and accurate satire upon the high noon of Mrs Thatcher
The immaculate rolling cadences of his novel are the keenest pleasure English prose has to offer
All stars
Most relevant
Well crafted story from a good author. Very good reader. Enjoyable commentary on the 80's.

Holds your attention

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
If you want to understand the political landscape of 1980s Britain, this is the novel. If you want to understand the history behind the current media morality panic about trans people, this is the novel. If you want to understand our current government, this is the novel.

excellent writing and urgent listening

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
An unforgettable novel with complex characters and wonderful prose, full of sardonic witticisms and insights. Brought to life by the excellent narration

Superb literature and narrator

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I really enjoyed the storytelling and characters but didn’t finish the book. Maybe I need to go back to it. I just couldn’t get myself into the story and got a little lost about half way through.

Didn’t finish

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Here's a recipe for a book I'm not going to enjoy:

1) Take a selection of right-wing politicians.
2) Mix them with a bunch of Hooray Henry, Oxford graduates.
3) Set it in the dismal decade of the 1980s.
4) Garnish with oodles of Gay sex, graphically depicted.
5) Serve raw.

I was so close to abandoning this book but I'm glad I persevered. Mr Hollinghurst, I salute you.

Persevere - it's worth it.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews