Shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize.

'An extraordinary book which takes the reader into a world of obsession and mystery . . . The Folding Star is lit by insight and humour' – Evening Standard

Edward Manners – thirty three and disaffected – escapes to a Flemish city in search of a new life. Almost at once he falls in love with seventeen-year-old Luc, and is introduced to the twilight world of the 1890s Belgian painter Edgard Orst.

'As is typical of the best classics, he has fashioned a universal tale of sexual obsession, love and death out of a particular life' – Marie Claire