The Burning Library

The Burning Library brings together the best of Edmund White's essays, articles and reviews from more than twenty years, and presents a fascinating portrait of the writer and his time. It features interviews, profiles and essays which focus on the literary and cultural figures whose work has most influenced White: Nabokov, Robert Mapplethorpe, Tennessee Williams, Michael Foucault, Pasolini, Roland Barthes, Christopher Isherwood, Truman Capote and Marguerite Yourcenar. Interleaved with these are a series of articles which illuminate Edmund White's response to the political dimensions of homosexual life - a response that centres movingly on the importance of friendship when AIDS enters the scene. Edmund White's acuity, wisdom, and humour shine through in this remarkable and enlightening book, a tribute to a courageous and supremely humane writer.