The Weight of Angels: The unforgettable new literary novel about Oscar Wilde by the bestselling author of The Heart’s Invisible Furies.

The life Oscar Wilde never had — reimagined by John Boyne in his most ambitious and emotionally powerful novel yet.

Can one rash decision prove the difference between a life well lived and a life destroyed?

When the Marquis of Queensbury left his calling card at the Albemarle Club in February 1895, it bore only his name and five words: ‘For Oscar Wilde, posing Somdomite’. The most feted playwright of his day famously sued for libel, which led to his arrest, criminal prosecution and imprisonment. From then on, his gilded existence spiralled into public disgrace, humiliation and an early death.

But what if he had simply ignored the insult?

Rather than dying impoverished in Paris at the age of forty-six, what if he had lived to bear witness to the momentous events and cataclysmic changes at the start of the twentieth century, and even influence some of them? What if the second half of his life were as celebrated, dramatic and tumultuous as the first?

Like Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet and Percival Everett's James, John Boyne explores one of the great what-if stories of modern literature, giving the great Anglo-Irish playwright an opportunity to take an entirely different path.

'The book sparkles with wit, clever inventions and twists of history.' The Times

'Exceptionally moving... A granularly imagined, witty, hugely pleasurable read' Neel Mukherjee

'Wise, imaginative, funny, and extremely moving' Tan Twan Eng, Booker longlisted author of The House of Doors

'A richly inventive multi-media novel of literary might-have-beens' John Banville, Booker prize winner of The Sea

'A spectacularly cheeky piece of speculative fiction, gleefully celebrating the possibilities of queer genius' Patrick Gale

© John Boyne 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026