The Twyborn Affair

First edition. Crown 8vo. 432pp. Dark brown cloth, lettered and blocked in gilt to spine. Pale green endpapers. Top edge stained light brown. Purple dustwrapper printed in black and gold designed by Mon Mohan, with cover drawing by [White's cousin] Luciana Arrighi and priced £5.95 net to front flap. 1/25,000 copies printed. The UK edition precedes that of the US Viking one by some five months.

An exploration of sexuality and identity from Europe to the Antipodes, set at the turn of the century. Regarded as the author's late masterpiece, The Twyborn Affair is partly based on the extraordinary character of Herbert Dyce-Murphy, a transvestite who worked as a female spy for British intelligence pre-World War I.

Initially short-listed for the Booker Prize, White pressured his publishers to have it removed from contention in order to make way for younger writers. Shy of formal award ceremonies, the 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature was accepted on his behalf by painter-friend Sidney Nolan. The latter was unceremoniously dumped (a recurring motif in the author's life) after his wife Cynthia's suicide and Nolan's hasty re-marriage with "the ashes...scarcely cold". "One of the great magicians of fiction... White's scope is vast and his invention endless." –Angus Wilson, The Observer

[Hubber/Smith, R1]