Christopher Castellani is the author of three previous novels (the trilogy A Kiss from Maddalena, The Saint of Lost Things, and All This Talk of Love) and The Art of Perspective, a book of essays on the craft of fiction. He is the son of Italian immigrants, a Guggenheim fellow, and the artistic director of GrubStreet, one of the country’s leading creative writing centers. Illuminating one of the great love stories of the twentieth century – Tennessee Williams and his longtime partner Frank Merlo – Christopher Castellani’s Leading Men (Viking) is a glittering novel of desire and ambition, set against the glamorous literary circles of 1950s Italy. What keeps two people together and what breaks them apart? Can we save someone else if we can’t save ourselves? Leading Men seamlessly weaves fact and fiction to navigate the tensions between public figures and their private lives. In an ultimately heartbreaking story about the burdens of fame and the complex negotiations of life in the shadows of greatness, Castellani reveals the hidden machinery of one of the great literary love stories of the twentieth-century.
