The Weight of Angels

Can one rash decision prove the difference between a life well lived and a life destroyed? When the Marquis of Queensbury left his calling card at the Albemarle Club in February 1895, it bore only his name and five words: 'For Oscar Wilde, posing Somdomite'. The most feted playwright of his day famously sued for libel, which led to his arrest, criminal prosecution and ultimately prison. From then on, his gilded existence spiralled into public disgrace, humiliation and an early death. But what if he had simply ignored the insult? What direction might his life have taken? This is the premise of John Boyne's extraordinary new novel, The Weight of Angels. Rather than dying in penury in Paris at the age of forty-six, what if he had lived to bear witness to the momentous events and cataclysmic changes of the first part of the twentieth century, and even influence some of them? What if the second half of his life were as celebrated, dramatic, tumultuous and exhilarating as the first? In imagining the life that Oscar Wilde never had, John Boyne has written one of the great what-if stories of modern literature, giving the great Anglo-Irish poet and playwright a fresh new voice and the opportunity to take an entirely different path.

Ideal for readers who:

• Are intrigued by alternate-history fiction that gives Oscar Wilde another path.
• Want a literary what-if built around one public insult and its consequences.
• Enjoy novels that blend biography, imagination and twentieth-century upheaval.
• Like stories about reputation, disgrace and the fragile hinge of a single choice.

ISBN

9781529943856

Format

Paperback

Publisher

Doubleday, (24 September 2026)

Number of Pages

624

Weight

700 grams

Language

English

Dimensions

234 x 153 x 40 mm

Categories:

Alternative History Historical fiction Modern and Contemporary Biographical