Imre

by Edward Prime-Stevenson

Early moving novel about the meeting of two gay men who gradually fall in love and wind up happily together: a shocker for 1906. Described by the author as "a little psychological romance", the narrative follows two men who by chance meet at a cafe in Budapest, Hungary. Both Oswald, a 30-something British aristocrat, and Imre, a 25-year-old Hungarian military officer, are "insistently masculine types tempered by a love of art". Over the course of several months they forge a friendship that leads to a series of cautious revelations and disclosures, and ultimately love.