**SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2020**

Two timely novellas exploring male sexual violence, power and corruption

‘Victory makes a convincing case for James Lasdun as one of the most incisive investigators of the human heart writing in English today… An instant masterpiece’ Johanna Thomas-Corr, Observer

Love and hate, desire and guilt, friendship and betrayal – these are the coordinates that drive James Lasdun’s two intensely gripping, darkly comic novellas of men and women caught between their irrational passions and the urge for control.

In Feathered Glory the seemingly happy marriage of a school principal and his artist wife reveals dangerous fault-lines as an old lover reappears in the husband’s life. The past also haunts the present in Afternoon of a Faun, where an accusation of historic sexual assault plunges Marco Rosedale, an English journalist in New York, into a series of deepening crises. Together these stories offer a sharply observed vision that will resonate with anyone interested in the clash of power and desire in our embattled contemporary lives.

Prizes

Short-listed for The Folio Prize 2020 (UK)

The word “masterpiece” is not one to throw around lightly but I was enthralled by James Lasdun’s novella Afternoon of a Faun, from his collection Victory… it has the psychological precision of a Chekhov story. -- Johanna Thomas-Corr * Evening Standard *Books of the Year* *
Two superb novellas full of contemporary resonance… extraordinarily taut and compelling. * Spectator *
[Victory makes] a convincing case for James Lasdun as one of the most incisive investigators of the human heart writing in English today… an instant masterpiece. * Observer *
The novellas [in Victory] are united by Lasdun’s signature virtues: a forensic attention to psychological detail, a mastery of dialogue and an all-round fluency that gives his prose a compelling swiftness. It is these virtues, more than the plots, that make Victory a triumph. * Literary Review *
Timely and irresistibly unpleasant… sure to provoke passionate discussion… [Afternoon of a Faun] lingers after you have closed the book with a vividness that testifies to the compact virtues of the novella. * Guardian *
[James Lasdun’s] electric new book… is absorbing… [it] constantly pulls the rug from under your feet. * Daily Mail *
Afternoon of a Faun is a brilliantly imagined, devastatingly insightful and powerfully rendered novel of sexual exploitation and betrayal. Like all of James Lasdun’s work, it is meticulously written and intelligent, both a novel of ideas and a cautionary tale for the #MeToo era. Its ending is bitterly ironic, or perhaps just darkly funny, depending upon one’s perspective – and Afternoon of a Faun is about the very drama of “perspective”.
In an era of sexual reckonings and “defunct male prerogatives”, any decades-old fling is a ticking time bomb an ambivalent ex can choose to detonate at whim. Yet who’s to say what actually happened? Afternoon of a Faun is an exquisitely rendered tale of moral arithmetic, erotic murkiness, and men’s fascination with other men’s scorecards. It’s also Lasdun at his most pleasurably diabolical.
[Victory] comprises two mesmeric… impressive stories, containing beautiful descriptions and subtle twists. * Sunday Times, *Best Literary Novels of 2019* *
Darkly humorous and compelling portraits of men wrestling with guilt and desire… [Afternoon of a Faun] feels very much a novel for our times. * Guardian *

James Lasdun was born in London and lives in Brooklyn. His novels, memoir, poetry and short-story collections have won many awards, and his essays have appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, London Review of Books and New Yorker, among others.