Unspeakable

"In this unnerving biography of Norman Douglas, a prolific British novelist, travel writer, and an undisguised and unrepentant pedophile, Rachel Hope Cleves grapples-at length and with feeling-with the interrelated questions of how to write the biography of a repulsive man and why. She focuses less on defining who Douglas was than on why Douglas seems so monstrous to us when he often did not to those who knew and (yes) loved him. Cleves does more than sketch the conditions and influence of Douglas's life and work; she probes how changing social norms affect our aesthetic and moral assessments"--