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The New Life: A Novel Audiobook
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A captivating debut about two marriages, two forbidden love affairs, and the passionate search for social and sexual freedom in late nineteenth-century London
In the summer of 1894, John Addington and Henry Ellis begin writing a book arguing that homosexuality, which is a crime at the time, is a natural, harmless variation of human sexuality. Though they have never met, John and Henry both live in London with their wives, Catherine and Edith, and in each marriage, there is a third party: John has a lover, a working-class man named Frank, and Edith spends almost as much time with her friend Angelica as she does with Henry.
John and Catherine have three grown daughters and a long, settled marriage, over the course of which Catherine has tried to accept her husband’s sexuality and her own role in life. Henry and Edith’s marriage is intended to be a revolution in itself, an intellectual partnership that dismantles the traditional understanding of what matrimony means.
Shortly before the book is to be published, Oscar Wilde is arrested. John and Henry must decide whether to go on, risking social ostracism and imprisonment or to give up the project for their own safety and the safety of the people they love.
A richly detailed, powerful, and visceral novel about love, sex, and the struggle for a better world, The New Life brilliantly asks: “What’s worth jeopardizing in the name or progress?” (New York Times Book Review).
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“The New Life is filled with nuance and tenderness, steeped in the atmosphere of late nineteenth century London, a world on the brink of social and sexual change.”
— Colm Tóibín, New York Times bestselling author
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"A beautiful, brave book that reminds us of the terrible human cost of bigotry; this is a novel against forgetting.”
— Boston Globe -
"A novel that promises to scrape back the polished veneer of late 19th-century England.”
— Daily Mail (London) -
“A beautiful, haunting portrait of love in a time that didn’t understand it and a reminder of how close we are to the past.”
— Town & Country -
“Lends a contemporary urgency to an exploration of same-sex intimacy and social opprobrium…with troubling implications for our own reactionary era.”
— Washington Post -
“Crewe uses meticulously researched period details to great effect and rounds out the narrative with solid characters and tight pacing.”
— Publishers Weekly
Awards
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A Town & Country Magazine Pick of Must-Read Books of the Season
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Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction
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A New York Times Book Review pick of Best Books in Paperback
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Winner of the Prix du Premier Roman Étranger
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Winner of the South Bank Show Award for Literature
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A New Yorker Best Books of the Year Pick
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A Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2023
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Shortlisted for the Nero Award
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A London Guardian Best Book of the Year
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A Sunday Times (London) Best Book of the Year
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One of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2023
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About Tom Crewe
Tom Crewe was born in Middlesbrough, England, in 1989. He has a PhD in nineteenth-century British history from the University of Cambridge. Since 2015, he has been an editor at the London Review of Books, to which he has contributed more than thirty essays on politics, art, history, and fiction. The New Life is his first novel.