Alan Hollinghurst signed copies of "The Stranger's Child," his first novel in seven years. Photo by Claude Peck

It was standing-room-only Thursday night (10/27) when celebrated novelist Alan Hollinghurst read from his new novel, "The Stranger's Child" in Minneapolis. About 90 people showed up at Magers & Quinnn bookstore to see the author of such novels as "The Line of Beauty" (for which he won the Man-Booker Prize), "The Folding Star" and "The Swimming Pool Library."

Hollinghurst's new book, his first in seven years, is a 20th-century-spanning saga centered on the life and afterlife of a minor poet, Cecil Valance, whose death in World War I cements his reputation as someone read by schoolchildren throughout England. Later sections deal with the effects on Valance's biography of society's changing views about gayness.

The Seattle Times called the book "magnificent," while the Guardian said "Hollinghurst has a strong, perhaps unassailable claim to be the best English novelist working today." The Star Tribune described it as a work of "masterful fiction."

In person Hollinghurst, who is doing a short United States tour for the new book, comes across as charming, witty, intelligent. He read a scene from the new novel's opening section set in 1913, and from a middle section, set in 1967.

Later, answering questions, Hollinghurst named Henry James as a writer he adores for the "intelligence he brought to writing fiction and for being a serious theorist of the novel." As a young man he also admired Nabokov, he said, "but I'm not an emigre Russian Jew writing in my third language."

Hollinghurst's "The Line of Beauty," about a young gay man entwined in the family of a prominent conservative member of Parliament in the 1980s, was made into a mini-series by the BBC. Hollinghurst said he liked the movie version of his novel.

Hollinghurst gave a wide-ranging interview to Euan Kerr at Minnesota Public Radio. Among other things, Hollinghurst discusses his non-winning of this year's Booker Prize, which many people thought was his, for "The Stranger's Child." Hollinghurst also talks about his changing view of being regarded as strictly a gay novelist.