The Gay Decameron

by Christopher Whyte

Ten gay men gather for a dinner party, and as the conversation flows the author reveals secrets about each of the guests.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Gay

352 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1998

About the author

Christopher Whyte (Crìsdean MacIlleBhàin) is a Scottish poet, novelist, translator and critic. He is a novelist in English, a poet in Scottish Gaelic, the translator into English of Marina Tsvetaeva, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Rainer Maria Rilke, and an innovative and controversial critic of Scottish and international literature. His work in Gaelic also appears under the name Crìsdean MacIlleBhàin.

Whyte was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in October 1952, educated there by Jesuits at St Aloysius College, and took the English studies tripos at Pembroke College, Cambridge between 1970 and 1973. He spent most of the next 12 years in Italy, teaching under Agostino Lombardo in the Department of English and American Studies at Rome's La Sapienza university from 1977 to 1985.

Whyte first published some translations of modern poetry into Gaelic, including poems by Konstantinos Kavafis, Yannis Ritsos and Anna Akhmatova. He then published two collections of original poetry in Gaelic, Uirsgeul (Myth), 1991 and An Tràth Duilich (The Difficult Time), 2002. In the meantime he started to write prose in English and has published four novels, Euphemia MacFarrigle and The Laughing Virgin (1995), The Warlock of Strathearn (1997), The Gay Decameron (1998) and The Cloud Machinery (2000).

In 2002, Whyte won a Scottish Research Book of the Year award for his edition of Sorley Maclean's Dàin do Eimhir (Poems to Eimhir), published by the Association for Scottish Literary Studies. He has also compiled some anthologies of present-day Gaelic poetry and written critical articles and essays.

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I remember reading and liking, I think, this novel. It didn't overwhelm me or leave a deep impression but not every novel can. That doesn't mean they aren't good. Unfortunately my 'good' if paltry specific memories of this novel lead me to buy and read the author's 'Cloud Machinery' which I hated passionately and which I can still remember and quote specifics of its awfulness. Because of this I am only giving this novel two stars rather then the normal three I award books that I can only remember liking but retain no specifics of. I can't help thinking if I did read it again I might hate it, but who knows?

[Luka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Idk how to rate/review this in a fair way because I feel like this book was not written for me. Which is obviously fine, but because of that I don't think I have any constructive comments/thoughts about this. So I'm just going to give this three stars and keep it moving. For how many truly important topics are touched upon (including r*pe, HIV AIDS, homophobia, suicide, etc. etc.), it's surprising how little I care for this. Idk man. I think this could be great for a lot of people, I just didn't feel it.

[Carolina Zampar]

I really cant believe someone (just like I did) thought about writing a gay book based on Decameron, I was thinking about it! So cool! I wanna read for sure!

[Anja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Instantly became one of my favorite books.
Loved it. Felt it flow through my heart.