Adam’s Breed
Radclyffe Hall published this novel in 1926, two years before the scandal that made her name, and it won both the Prix Femina and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Gian-Luca is an unwanted orphan raised above a London delicatessen by a hard, bitter grandmother. He grows into a gifted head waiter, admired and prosperous, yet the endless serving of rich food to greedy diners fills him with a disgust he cannot quite name. Worldly success curdles into a hunger of the spirit, and he abandons everything for a solitary retreat into the woods, chasing a purity that ordinary life keeps denying him. Hall writes with real tenderness about loneliness and the ache for something beyond appetite. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.
About the Author
Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943) was an English poet and novelist. Openly lesbian and independently wealthy, she published eight novels, but it was The Well of Loneliness and its 1928 obscenity trial that made her an enduring, if reluctant, figure in the history of gay rights.
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