Imre: A Memorandum

Summary

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.