The Stranger's Child: Alan Hollinghurst’s dialogues with the past
The Stranger's Child: Alan Hollinghurst’s dialogues with the past

Summary/Abstract: In The Stranger’s Child, Alan Hollinghurst retraces the changes that marked English culture and attitudes over the 20th century, especially regarding homosexuals. The author also describes the mechanisms governing the process of creating and re-writing versions of English history. Hollinghurst reveals the multiplicity of contradictory voices with which the historian/biographer has to deal, as well as the apparent historicity of the researcher whose ―present‖ interferes with the investigated ―past.‖ Although the novel gives evidence of the progressing democratization and polyphony of historical writing, it focuses on the factors responsible for misrepresenting history: the fallibility of human memory, the unintentional or deliberate annihilation of heritage, the personal agenda of both witnesses who conceal or falsify certain facts, and researchers whose primary goal is to prove their point.

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