Edmund White's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Edmund White recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Edmund White's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

Dancer from the Dance

Andrew Holleran

4.2

One of the most important works of gay literature, this haunting, brilliant novel is a seriocomic remembrance of things past -- and still poignantly present. It depicts the adventures of Malone, a beautiful young man searching for love amid New York's emerging gay scene. From Manhattan's Everard Baths and after-hours discos to Fire Island's deserted parks and lavish orgies, Malone looks high and l

Recommended by Edmund White, Hermione Hoby, and Jonathan Rauch.

Edmund White

it has a sumptuous, beautiful, poetic style, which I think is a characteristic of gay writing in general. [source]

Hermione Hoby

It has this exquisite elegiac air, which obviously compounds the poignancy of the tragedy of Aids. [source]

Jonathan Rauch

It captures a moment in history when you’ve got the emergence of an entire culture of people for whom free love is legal, but marriage is unthinkable. [source]

Our Lady of the Flowers

Jean Genet

4.0

Novel by Jean Genet, written while he was in prison for burglary and published in 1944 in French as Notre-Dame des Fleurs. The novel and the author were championed by many contemporary writers, including Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean Cocteau, who helped engineer a pardon for Genet. A wildly imaginative fantasy of the Parisian underworld, the novel tells the story of Divine, a male prostitute who conso

Recommended by Edmund White.

Edmund White

He wrote most of it in prison. The dialogue is very raw but the narration is very elegant and elevated. So there’s a kind of contrast between the two. [source]

A Single Man

Christopher Isherwood

4.3

"When A Single Man was originally published, it shocked many by its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in midlife. George, the protagonist, is adjusting to life on his own after the sudden death of his partner, determined to persist in the routines of his daily life. An Englishman and a professor living in suburban Southern California, he is an outsider in every way, and his int

Recommended by Edmund White.

Edmund White

Well I think it’s the opposite of Our Lady of the Flowers in one sense as it’s not metaphorical. The style is extremely chaste and simple. The action of the book takes place in a single day. The reason it’s innovative is that with George – who’s the main character in the book – there’s no ideology given about how he came to be gay or what his childhood was like. Nor is he confined to the ghetto but he’s a respected teacher. He’s an Englishman living in Los Angeles, as Isherwood was himself, and he has lots of straight friends. One of them is a woman called Charley whom he sees during the course of the book. Another straight friend is a student called Kenny whom he sees at the end of the book. [source]

The Folding Star

Alan Hollinghurst

3.7

In self-imposed exile in an ancient Flemish city, an embittered 33-year-old language tutor, Edward Manners, falls in love with his alluring 17-year-old pupil, Luc Altidore. As Edward pursues the elusive object of his infatuation--and plunges into affairs with two other men--this book interweaves past and present, history and memory, into a tapestry of unfulfillable desire.

Recommended by Edmund White.

Edmund White

It acknowledges the existence of this terrible disease but has an incredible enshrinement of physical love in the affair between Edward and Luc. [source]

Maurice

E. M. Forster

4.3

Maurice is heartbroken over unrequited love, which opened his heart and mind to his own sexual identity. In order to be true to himself, he goes against the grain of society’s often unspoken rules of class, wealth, and politics.
Forster understood that his homage to same-sex love, if published when he completed it in 1914, would probably end his career. Thus, Maurice languished in a drawer for fi

Recommended by Edmund White.

Edmund White

Historically, it’s very interesting – a book he suppressed during his lifetime. It seems based on wish fulfilment, but also has a lot of class analysis. [source]