About the Book

William di Canzio’s Alec, inspired by Maurice, E. M. Forster’s secret novel of a happy same-sex love affair, tells the story of Alec Scudder, the gamekeeper Maurice Hall falls in love with in Forster’s classic, published only after the author's death.

Di Canzio follows their story past the end of Maurice to the front lines of battle in World War I and beyond. Forster, who tried to write an epilogue about the future of his characters, was stymied by the radical change that the Great War brought to their world. With the hindsight of a century, di Canzio imagines a future for them and a past for Alec―a young villager possessed of remarkable passion and self-knowledge.

Alec continues Forster’s project of telling stories that are part of “a great unrecorded history.” Di Canzio’s debut novel is a love story of epic proportions, at once classic and boldly new.

About the Author

William di Canzio is a playwright whose works have been staged in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and San Diego; at Yale University and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center; and at the National Constitution Center.

His plays have earned fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, as well as residencies at the Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France) and at the MacDowell, where he was designated the Thornton Wilder Fellow.

He has taught literature, writing, and theater studies at Smith College, Haverford College, and Yale University.  At Yale, he was appointed dean of Trumbull College.  He is currently associated with the Pennoni Honors College of Drexel University, where his work has been recognized with the school’s award for outstanding teaching.

His first novel, Alec, inspired by EM Forster’s Maurice and published in 2021 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, was named Editors’ Choice by the New York Times Book Review.