'The best novel I have read for ages. My heart was constantly in my throat as I read . . .
There is so much to enjoy to contemplate to wonder at and to be lost in' Stephen Fry
'Meticulous and atmospheric . . . delicious unease and pervasive threat give this assured first
novel great singularity and a kind of gothic edge' Michael Donkor Guardian Cambridge 1994.
Professor Don Lamb is a revered art historian at the height of his powers consumed by the book
he is writing about the skies of the Venetian master Tiepolo. However his academic brilliance
belies a deep inexperience of life and love. When an explosive piece of contemporary art is
installed on the lawn of his college it sets in motion Don's abrupt departure from Cambridge
to take up a role at a south London museum. There he befriends Ben a young artist who draws
him into the anarchic 1990s British art scene and the nightlife of Soho. Over the course of one
long hot summer Don glimpses a liberating new existence. But his epiphany is also a moment of
self-reckoning as his oldest friendship - and his own unexamined past - are revealed to him in
a devastating new light. As Don's life unravels he suffers a fall from grace that shatters his
world into pieces. 'A novel that combines formal elegance with gripping storytelling . . .
wildly enjoyable' Financial Times 'Tiepolo Blue really has blown me away . . . The last debut
novel I read that had this much talent buzzing around inside it was Alan Hollinghurst's The
Swimming-Pool Library.' Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
