In January 1895 Henry James anticipates the opening of his first play, Guy Domville, in London. The production fails, and he returns, chastened and humiliated, to his writing desk. The result is a string of masterpieces, but they are produced at a high personal cost.
In The Master Colm Tóibín captures the exquisite anguish of a man who circulated in the grand parlours and palazzos of Europe, who was astonishingly vibrant and alive in his art, and yet whose attempts at intimacy inevitably failed him and those he tried to love. It is a powerful account of the hazards of putting the life of the mind before affairs of the heart. Colm Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy in 1955. He is the author of eleven novels including The Master, Brooklyn, The Testament of Mary, and The Magician. His work has been shortlisted for the Booker three times, and won the Costa Novel Award, the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Impac Award. He has also published two collections of stories and many works of non-fiction. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2004, a remarkable novel about Henry James, the American-born novelist and a connoisseur of exile.
