Domestic Animal

Francis King (1923–2011) was born in Switzerland, spent his childhood in India, and was educated in England. While still an undergraduate at Oxford, he completed his first novel, The Dark Tower, which was published in 1946. He worked for the British Council for 15 years—in Italy, Greece, Finland, and Japan successively—while also regularly publishing novels, poems, and short stories. In 1966, he returned to England and became a full-time writer and critic. He published more than 50 books, the accolades for which include the Somerset Maugham Award, the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Prize, and the Golden PEN Award for a Lifetime’s Distinguished Service to Literature. Twice nominated for the Booker Prize, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and President of PEN International.Rumaan Alam is the author of four novels. He lives in New York City.

“Few English novelists have written with more might and assurance.”—The Spectator“[King’s] corpus documents the evolution of norms governing the literary depiction of homosexuality . . . What makes King’s constrained fictions compelling is that his discretion is not absolute. He is almost a quintessential English novelist of manners . . . [But] he nursed an interest in the perverse; murder, cannibalism, incest, and other forbidden zones of sexuality . . . [In] A Domestic Animal . . . we find the coupling of delicacy and brutality, reticence and release, that makes King one of modern British literature’s great anatomists of repression . . . A Domestic Animal is a compact, intricately patterned story of unrequited erotic obsession, focused on the relationship between a closeted English novelist and a beautiful Italian philosopher . . . Among the novel’s daring ideas is its suggestion that closetedness and English taciturnity are part of a common condition, each an art of concealment that simultaneously throttles vitality and encourages the redirection of energy into work and achievement.” —Charlie Tyson, Harper’s Magazine“A delicate and truly touching story … horribly true to life.”—Robert Garioch, The Listener“King is a writer’s writer, his voice is utterly convincing.”—Beryl Bainbridge“Francis King is a name not much heard these days, but before his death 15 years ago he was a prominent figure in the literary world . . . But good things never die, and, now, his 1970 novel A Domestic Animal is reissued by the redoubtable McNally Editions . . . The forward momentum of the story requires that this ‘foolish old queen who has lost his head over a handsome and normal Italian’ must confront his passion with Antonio — and this drives the story to developments both surprising and inevitable.”—John Self, The Critic Magazine“One of the finest and most remarkable of English novelists of our time.”—The Scotsman“He deserves the widest possible readership.”—Melvyn Bragg, Punch“No one writes better prose than Francis King.”—Ruth Rendell“Witty, poignant, socially and internationally telling, it traps the tragi-comic essence of love that not merely isn’t but can’t be reciprocated.”—Brigid Brophy“Wryly tender and painful . . . He is writing about love in all its aspects of greed, devotion, happiness and loss.”—Janice Elliott, Sunday Telegraph“The author investigates his chosen examples of emotional blight with sympathy, precision, and immense skill.”—The Evening Standard“His writing is like fine china … This book’s strength is its dark stab of feeling.”—Philip Norman, The Sunday Times“[Francis King’s] writing is always accomplished and elegant.”—A. S. Byatt“A most accomplished writer who commands both deftness and feeling.”—Christopher Wordsworth, The Guardian“Francis King commands a noteworthy talent; he is one of a number of contemporary British novelists who deserve the best attention here.” —The New York Herald Tribune Book Review“Master of a subtle, melancholy style, rich and understated.”—Roxanna Robinson, The New York Times Book Review