This is an extremely classy anthology in every way - and it would need to be, to merit - that's the whopping price tag from its stunning cover photograph by George Platt Lynes of, two intertwined naked bodies, one black, one white, to its' final entry, a whimsical little story by the young Dutch writer Edwin Oostmeijer. In between you'll find everything from Plato's robust explanation of homosexuality to Balzac's aristocratic and mysterious evocation of the castrato in Sarrasine, from the exquisite delicacy of Marguerite Yourcenar's Alexis to the distasteful paedophilia of Tony Duvert's When Jonathan Died. There are also contributions from Freud, Thomas Mann and, inevitably, the Marquis de Sade. In his good humoured introduction David Leavitt doesn't explain why so many of the featured writers - Gide, Camus, Flaubert, Cocteau, Navarre, Barthes, Tournier, Drever are French, but the diversity of the material gives the reader a sense of limitless perspective, an impressive achievement for a book which ought, on the face of it, to have limited appeal.
