its_a_sin_main-image-1800×1200.jpg

Reading lists

What to read after watching It’s A Sin

Andrew Holleran

Dance from the Dance accomplished for the 1970’s what The Great Gatsby achieved for the 1920’s — the glamorization of a decade and a culture

A life changing read for me. Describes a New York that has completely disappeared and for which I longed - stuck in closed-on-Sunday's London

An astonishingly beautiful book. The best gay novel written by anyone of our generation

The first gay novel everybody read... It’s the story of youth and beauty and money and drugs. But overarchingly, it’s the story of a new queer future

Beautiful, hilarious, heart-breaking and tender

Erotic heat percolates through these pages

Beautifully written, evocative, and hilarious

Compelling… A vision of society, straight and gay

Despite being of its time, Dancer from the Dance is also timeless: the restless momentum the characters feel, being pulled to the next lover, the next party, the next anecdote… what Holleran has given us is our very own queer (queerer?) Great Gatsby: its decadence, its fear, its violence, its ecstasy

Dancer From the Dance… [is] the most perfect piece of literature… the two central characters still just really resonate. They blossom with every shade of the gay sensibility, from the very best to the absolutely most despicable… it’s just a perfect book… an absolute masterpiece

Elegiac, and profoundly romantic; a kind of gay Great Gatsby

The novel has lost none of its incandescence. With his lavish – if pointed – eye, Holleran acts as both a faithful scribe and scold, documenting the pleasures and pitfalls of a newly freed community… a lyrical tribute to a vanished paradise

'Astonishingly beautiful... The best gay novel written by anyone of our generation' Harpers 
 
'A life changing read for me. Describes a New York that has completely disappeared and for which I longed - stuck in closed-on-Sunday's London' Rupert Everett 
 
Young, divinely beautiful and tired of living a lie, Anthony Malone trades life as a seemingly straight, small town lawyer for the disco-lit decadence of New York's 1970's gay scene. Joining an unbridled world of dance parties, saunas, deserted parks and orgies - at its centre Malone befriends the flamboyant queen, Sutherland, who takes this new arrival under his preened wing. 
 
But for Malone, the endless city nights and Fire Island days, are close to burning out. It is love that Malone is longing for, and soon he will have to set himself free. 
 
First published in 1978, Dancer from the Dance is widely considered the greatest, most exciting novel of the post-Stonewall generation. Told with wit, eroticism and unashamed lyricism, it remains a heart-breaking love letter to New York's hedonistic past, and a testament to the brilliance of our passions as they burn brightest. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALAN HOLLINGHURST

Andrew Holleran

Praise for Dancer from the Dance

Dance from the Dance accomplished for the 1970’s what The Great Gatsby achieved for the 1920’s — the glamorization of a decade and a culture

A life changing read for me. Describes a New York that has completely disappeared and for which I longed - stuck in closed-on-Sunday's London

An astonishingly beautiful book. The best gay novel written by anyone of our generation

Dance from the Dance accomplished for the 1970’s what The Great Gatsby achieved for the 1920’s — the glamorization of a decade and a culture

A life changing read for me. Describes a New York that has completely disappeared and for which I longed - stuck in closed-on-Sunday's London

An astonishingly beautiful book. The best gay novel written by anyone of our generation

Dance from the Dance accomplished for the 1970’s what The Great Gatsby achieved for the 1920’s — the glamorization of a decade and a culture

A life changing read for me. Describes a New York that has completely disappeared and for which I longed - stuck in closed-on-Sunday's London

An astonishingly beautiful book. The best gay novel written by anyone of our generation

Articles featuring Andrew Holleran

What to read after watching It’s A Sin

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter