Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst reads from his new novel at Outwrite

• Robert Taylor
• Novelist Alan Hollinghurst will read from and sign his new novel "The Stranger's Child" at Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse on Wednesday, October 26, at 7:30 pm.

It's odd to hear a writer describe one of the world's most prestigious literary prizes as “the enemy.” But novelist Alan Hollinghurst, who won the Man Booker Prize for his 2004 novel The Line of Beauty, speaks about that honor in the same way he speaks about many other things: with a self-deprecating, wry, and wary judgment. “For a while it really did become the enemy,” he says. “I traveled and spoke about the book until I was almost sick of the thought of it.”

Although Hollinghurst had developed a strong reputation and a growing readership with his first three novels, the 2004 prize for his fourth brought the writer a level of attention and popular acclaim he was unaccustomed to. He'd originally had trouble even finding a publisher for his first novel The Swimming Pool Library and had often been quarantined with the label “gay writer.” The new and sudden mainstream acclaim was both welcome encouragement and unwelcome distraction, he says.