The Burning Library

This book brings together some of Edmund White's essays, articles and reviews from more than 20 years, and presents a portrait of the writer and his time. The book features interviews, profiles and essays which focus on the literary and cultural figures whose work has most influenced White: Nabokov, Robert Mapplethorpe, Tennesse Williams, Michel Foucault, Pasoline, Roland Barthes, Christopher Isherwood, Truman Capote and Marguerite Yourcenar. Interweaved with these are a series of articles which illuminate Edmund White's response to the political dimensions of homosexual life - a response that centres on the importance of friendship when AIDS enters the scene.