The Unauthorized Letters of Oscar Wilde

HEMINGWAY FIRST NOVEL PRIZE Critical Comment: D.T. Max, New York Times Book Review: Exceptional, smart and playful, a novel of quiet seductions. An imagined correspondence between Wilde and the author that turns into a drama of cross-century friendship. Merlin Holland; author, grandson of Oscar Wilde:A charming read. Im sure Grandfather would have seen the fun of it. Hillary Hemingway; Director, Hemingway Literary Festival: What a delight to discover this unique voice. The novel is already the buzz of New York. Jill Jackson,Syndicated columnist, King Features:A brilliant correspondence, beautifully written and researched. Very funny stuff. Ellis Hanson, Author, Decadence & Catholicism:A style so conversational and amusing, it felt like Holloway was sitting at my dinner table. Postmodern parallels with Wilde abound theatre is transmogrified into TV commercials, rentboys into go-go types in a hustler bar, Reading Gaol into a psycho-prison for sexual outcasts. They make for interesting echoes and dissonances between decadence and post-modernism, aestheticism and camp, innuendo and outness, sex as gross indecency and sex as medical problem. Giovanna Franci,Professor of English, University of Bologna, Italy:What a wonderful concept! Beautifully realized! I couldnt put it down. LINER NOTES: In February of 1993, enroute from Capetown, South Africa to Los Angeles, during a lay-over at Londons Cadogan Hotel, C. Robert Holloway is convinced he witnessed the arrest of Oscar Wilde from the very room hes occupying. After badgering a reluctant night-manager, he learns that his room is indeed the same suite from which Wilde was ignominiously hauled away to Bow Street Police Station in April of 1895. Emboldened by a split of honor-bar rose and a chocolate rush, he drafts a letter to Wilde, at once part apology - part adulation - part exorcism and no small part jet-lagged foolishness. Next morning,he deposits it in a Piccadilly post-box, and shortly departs for California, never giving it a second thought. Two weeks later a thick envelope tumbles from Holloways mail-box in West Hollywood. Filling several pages, the flamboyant hand bears a strong resemblance to Wildes. Its authors observations on Holloways lineage and threadbare education are accurate enough to unnerve him, albeit momentarily. Thus begins an audacious, outrageous, occasionally trenchant, often hilarious correspondence between a little-known TV producion designer and the most famous gay man in the Western world.