The Heart in Exile. A Novel.

Bookseller Notes

An important gay novel, and a scarce first edition.Rodney Garland was the pseudonym, used for the first time here, of the Hungarian migr Adam de Hegedus - who had earlier published seven books, including one novel, under his own name. Its narrator is a 'young doctor', the psychiatrist Anthony Page, who is investigating the death of 'a friend of his youth' (the blurb puts it coyly, Julian Leclerc was his lover). Garland provides a detailed account of queer life in London in the period after the Second World War. The novel is regarded as the first with an openly gay detective.The most successful of the author's books, it was praised on publication: Marghanita Laski in The Observer described that its depiction of 'a furtive fantastic "underground" sector of London can arouse no disgust but only a deep pity coupled with a new understanding', whilst John Betjeman for the Telegraph considered it a 'well-written' and 'completely honest story of homosexual life in London', which 'makes no attempt to defend or condemn'.