The groundbreaking novel about sex and growing up, available as an ebook for the first time. Longlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize, The Hand-Reared Boy was the first literary novel to honestly, and explicitly, explore the sexual awakening of a young man. Quite shocking when first published in 1970, it is now considered a classic. It is the first book in the Horatio Stubbs Trilogy. Brian says: “Young Horatio Stubbs suffers the pangs of adolescence, but is weaned from the pleasures of masturbation by the delights offered by his school’s nursing sister, who is not all she seems. The novel became a great scandal in England, where it was rejected by thirteen publishers, and caused a lawsuit – as a result of which it became a bestseller.”

The ebullient ‘average-man’ hero of The Hand-Reared Boy is now a year older. He is on excellent form when his regiment is despatched overseas to India to become part of the unforgettable Forgotten Army, were heat and dust are in conflict with the sexual urges of the young soldiers. Once in Burma, the men are plunged into the Battle of Kohima. The sexuality and blunt language of fighting men in crisis is humorously conveyed in this, the onl

In this powerful addition to the legend of a sex-prone sergeant, Horatio Stubbs finds himself in trouble with women - and not for the first time. However, quite uncommonly, Stubbs seems to be enjoying a period of success, with a bevy of eager women who all want a piece of him. The whoring, boozing and army horseplay of this novel take place in serious surroundings. The year is 1946, and British, Dutch, Indian, Japanese, Chinese and Indonesian forces confront each other for possession of the island of Sumatra.