Hugh Fleetwood is a writer and a painter.
Born in the U.K., he spent his early adult life in Italy and now lives in London. He has published twenty-two books to date, including novels, collections of short stories and a travel book. One of his novels - The Girl Who Passed For Normal - won the John Llewylln Rhys Memorial Prize; another, The Order of Death, was made into a film starring Harvey Keitel and John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten).
His last novel, The Dark Paintings, was published by and is available from BIGfib Books.

He has had exhibitions of his paintings in Italy - in Rome and at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto - and in London at the St. Raphael Gallery. He has also designed the jackets of some of his books. A selection of his work may be viewed on-line at www.lonbersyl.com.

Aside from The Order of Death, he has co-scripted a number of films - including The Bachelor, with Keith Carradine, Miranda Richardson, Kristin Scott Thomas and Max von Sydow, and Jonah Who Lived in the Whale, with Juliet Aubrey and Jean-Hughes Anglade - and has worked on the English versions of Roberto Benigni’s last four films, amongst them Life is Beautiful.

Bibliography

1972 A Painter Of Flowers (Novel)               
1973 The Girl Who Passed For Normal (Novel)          
1974 Foreign Affairs (Novel)          
1975 A Conditional Sentence (Novel)                   
1976 A Picture Of Innocence (Novel)     
1977 The Order Of Death (Novel)                   
1978 An Artist And A Magician (Novel)    
1979 The Beast (Stories)  
1980 The Godmother (Novel)
1981 The Redeemer (Novel)
1982 Fictional Lives (Stories)
1983 A Young Fair God (Novel) 
1984 A Dance To The Glory Of God (Stories)
1985 A Dangerous Place (Travel) 
1986 Paradise (Novel)
1987 The Past (Novel)    
1988 The Man Who Went Down With His Ship (Stories)
1989 The Witch (Novel)
1991 The Mercy Killer (Novel)
1999 Brothers (Novel)
2004 L & I (Novella)
2006 The Dark Paintings

Selected Press Reviews:

Richard Labonte - Books to Watch Out For - May 2006
The Dark Paintings

Fleetwood, a British writer with some two dozen books published over more thanthree decades, isn't particularly known as a gay novelist - though he's had several quite queer short stories published in Gay Men's Press ,anthologies over the years.
This eruditely horrific novel, however, is a very gay tale indeed, with a malevolent mystery at its heart: one after another, a wealthy older Italian man's breathtakingly beautiful young male lovers are dying.
The story is mannered, in the style of Patricia Highsmith's several Ripley novels (think Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley, if you haven't read the books); eerie, in the style of Clive Barker's supernatural-tinged novels; and steeped in the suffocating atmosphere of a rural village where everyone knows everybody else’s business - or thinks they do. You can't always tell a book by its cover (in this case, a painting by Fleetwood, who is also an accomplished artist), but the title goes a long way toward unraveling what's behind the spooky deaths.
This is a riveting and cultured read, with a titillating whiff of the perverse and a compelling miasma of creepiness permeating every twist of its smart plot.

Other Resources

Hugh Fleetwood's website: http://www.hughfleetwood.com



Hugh Fleetwood's most recent novel, The Dark Paintings was published by BIGfib in 2006. Buy it <here>

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