The Burning Library

From the National Book Award honored author of A Previous Life and a master of American literature comes a dazzling collection of 25 years of groundbreaking essays that redefined politics, language, identity, and friendship.

“A testament to White’s versatility, his insatiable curiosity about the emergence of gays in modern American life…. Fascinating.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Along with his essays of gay experience and desire, this magisterial collection of White's nonfiction writings includes dazzling subversive appreciations of cultural icons as diverse as Truman Capote and Cormac McCarthy, Robert Mapplethorpe and the singer formerly known as Prince.

Edmund White was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1940. His fiction includes the autobiographical trilogy A Boy’s Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, and The Farewell Symphony, as well as Caracole, Forgetting Elena, Nocturnes for the King of Naples, and Skinned Alive, a collection of short stories. He is also the author of a highly acclaimed biography of Jean Genet, a short study of Proust, a travel book about gay America—States of Desire—and Our Paris. He is an officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and teaches at Princeton University. He lives in New York City.