Imre

Synopsis

At a cafe in Budapest, Oswald, a British ambassador in his thirties, meets the young, handsome Imre, a Hungarian military officer. The two develop a strong friendship through their shared interest in art, but as their relationship grows more serious, they begin spending hours upon hours sharing their innermost secrets.Eventually, their friendship turns to romance, a partnership between equals who respect and cherish one another despite the obstacles of an intensely homophobic society.Published in a time when homosexuality was largely criminalized, Imre: A Memorandum offered a hopeful narrative immersed in gay history that would prove both inspiring and instructional for generations to come.Imre is a novel by Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson. Originally published in 1906 and written while Prime-Stevenson was living as an expatriate in Europe, the novel is a groundbreaking, positive story of romance between two men.Throughout his career, Prime-Stevenson sought to dispel falsehoods surrounding the history of homosexuality. Writing under the pseudonym Xavier Mayne, Prime-Stevenson took great care to insulate himself from the reprisal common to the period in which he worked.