Robert leads the life of what the Daily Mail's Jan Moir might describe as a typical gay man who like many of his generation takes the drug and gym fueled lifestyle in his stride, obsessing about his weight and appearance, whilst knowing very little about the struggle for the very equality and freedoms that he takes for granted.

Initially, Rupert Smith tells the story of a young gay man Robert and the coiterie that forms his extended 'family'. It feels like a natural progression of the themes in Hollinghurst's book and overs a critique of the hedonism that now purports to represent Western gay culture in the 21st Century and of the repression of and struggle for gay identities in the late 1950s. If you enjoyed Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimming Pool Library for the way it depicted gay life both in the late 1980s and simultaneously revealed the lives of gay men before the liberation of the late 1960s, then Rupert Smith's new novel Man's World is certainly worthy of your time.