Tiepolo Blue

Longlisted for the Authors' Club First Novel Award'Divine . . . the smart, sexy read you need' Evening Standard'Startlingly impressive' Daily Mail'Exhilarating' Vogue.com'An electric new novel' GuardianAN EXQUISITE DEBUT NOVEL. A MID-LIFE COMING-OF-AGE STORY CHARTING ONE MAN'S SEXUAL AWAKENING AND HIS SPECTACULAR FALL FROM GRACE IN 1990S LONDON. FOR FANS OF ALAN HOLLINGHURST AND EDWARD ST AUBYN.Exiled from his university position for an inexcusable blunder, art historian Don Lamb flees to London, a city alive with sex and creativity. There, over the course of a long, hot summer, as he is immersed in the anarchic art and gay scenes of the mid-90s, Don sees his carefully curated life irrevocably changed. But his epiphany is also a reckoning, as his unexamined past is revealed to him in a devastating new light.Intense and atmospheric, Tiepolo Blue traces Don's turbulent awakening, and his desperate flight from art into life.'Wildly enjoyable . . . A novel that combines formal elegance with gripping storytelling' Financial Times'Dizzying and exciting and unsettling, and beautifully told' Reverend Richard Coles, Daily Mail

This divine debut from art critic and academic James Cahill is the smart, sexy read you need in 2022. Expect to see it on prize lists as well as Instagram feeds. The novel's protagonist is Professor Don Lamb, a precocious but prematurely stuffy art historian and Cambridge don, who likes measuring the skies in the paintings of Venetian master Tiepolo. Lamb takes preternatural offence when a Tracey Emin-esque bed sculpture is installed outside his college lodgings, and departs to London in a sulk for a new museum gig. There awaits a new kind of awakening - and it's not just because the YBAs are taking off. Not only an addictive pageturner, Cahill's book taps into the tensions and suspicions between generations that feels incredibly relevant for our testy times., Bringing together the Italian masters and the Young British Artists, this is a debut that looks at art, power, academia, and the potential of the urban setting at the end of the 20th century., The story of Tiepolo Blue and its people have invaded my dreams...something in the way Cahill puts the reader in Don Lamb's shoes does (or has done in my case) extraordinary things. I blushed and howled warnings and wanted to slap, cajole, hug, disown, disavow and walk away from him. His life will look so squalid and pathetic from the outside, but Cahill takes us inside and we somehow respect and love him. This is the best novel I have read for ages. It is so beautifully written, not a false note in any sentence. Cahill's presentation of the agonising clash of aesthetics, of culture, of generations... it's just masterly. Don's disintegration is painful to read, but it all grips you like a thriller. My heart was constantly in my throat as I read... There is so much to enjoy, to contemplate, to wonder at, and to be lost in., The spirit of E.M. Forster is alive and well in James Cahill. The same palpating of damaged moral tissue, the same psychological canniness, the same gently invoked erudition, the same exactitude and eloquence - except Cahill is able to explore forbidden themes that Forster feared to touch on except posthumously, This is a novel full of suspense and surprise. It made me laugh and brought back memories of a time in my own life. I missed the characters as soon as I'd finished.

James Cahill has worked in both the art world and academia for the last ten years, combining writing and research with a role at a leading contemporary art gallery. He is currently a Fellow in classics at King's College London. His writing has been published in the TLS, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the London Review of Books and The Burlington Magazine, among other publications.