When I first wrote The Sea Elephants, my protagonist (Shagun) and I were both asexual. My writing professor read the novel and said it’s dying to be a gay love story. Eventually, when I came out and rewrote the book from my newfound identity of queerness, I searched for queer stories that, like mine, were set outside the US or had non-American leads. And I realized that this is a significant gap that needs to be bridged. I felt a tremendous sense of solidarity with the books I did find. They made me feel less alone. Later, as an assistant professor of English, I’ve taught all of these books.
Shagun Mathur is sixteen when he joins a traveling street theater troupe to flee a homophobic father, conversion therapy, high school bullies, and his own guilt about the death of his sisters. Shagun thrives amidst his fellow storytellers, performing mortals and gods, men and women. When he meets Marc Singer, a Jewish-American migrant, he also finds love. But when Shagun’s troubled past begins to engulf him again, he must decide if he is strong enough to face his fears and claim his happiness. Set in 1990s India, The Sea Elephants is an ode to the healing powers of found family and queer pride.
Set in 1990s working-class Glasgow, Young Mungo depicts a queer love story blossoming against the rising tensions of religious clashes, gang wars, and class struggles.
Tenderly written and brilliantly paced, the novel also depicts one of the most beautiful sibling relationships. Watch for: the two gangs (one protestant and the other catholic) facing off on a historic bridge in Glasgow and the scene where Mungo meets James in, wait for it, a dovecote.
A story of queer love and working-class families, Young Mungo is the brilliant second novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain
Douglas Stuart's first novel Shuggie Bain, winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, is one of the most successful literary debuts of the century so far. Published or forthcoming in forty territories, it has sold more than one million copies worldwide. Now Stuart returns with Young Mungo, his extraordinary second novel. Both a page-turner and literary tour de force, it is a vivid portrayal of working-class life and a deeply moving and highly suspenseful story of the dangerous…
Originally written in French, and translated by Donald Winkler, Querelle of Roberval is set in working-class Quebec, it has as its hero a young gay man, Querelle, who moves into the lumber town of Roberval.
The social dynamic of the town is upended as men both out and closeted are drawn to his Adonis-like beauty—so well-described that I fell in love with him. Meanwhile, as a mill strike causes the interclass tensions to rise. Winner of the Marquis de Sade Prize, this gem is an ode to Jean Genet, male beauty, and the literary form of the tragedy.
Shortlisted for the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize
Homage to Jean Genet's antihero and a brilliant reimagining of the ancient form of tragedy, Querelle of Roberval, winner of the Marquis de Sade Prize, is a wildly imaginative story of justice, passion, and murderous revenge.
As a millworkers' strike in the northern lumber town of Roberval drags on, tensions start to escalate between the workers-but when a lockout renews their solidarity, they rally around the mysterious and magnetic influence of Querelle, a dashing newcomer from Montreal. Strapping and unabashed, likeable but callow, by day he walks the picket lines and…
Oprah Magazine describes the novel as Call Me By Your Name set in Communist Poland and I cannot think of a more fitting description!
The romance between the leads, Ludwik and Janus begins in an idyllic summer in a rural setting. When the novel moves to Warsaw and Janus gets a prestigious, highly-coveted government job, politics enters their lives like an unwelcome but impossible-to-get-rid-of third party and their relationship pays the price. How could it not? It is, after all, the age of the iron curtain in a highly-religious Poland.
To read whether our heroes recover from this blow and find each other again, read the book!
LONGLISTED FOR THE POLARI PRIZE 2021 A Guardian Book of the Year
'The highest talent at work' Sebastian Barry
'Beautiful ... A masterpiece' Attitude
Poland, 1980. Shy, anxious Ludwik has been sent along with the rest of his university class to an agricultural camp. Here he meets Janusz - and together they spend a dreamlike summer falling in love.
But with summer over, the two are sent back to Warsaw. Confronted by the scrutiny, intolerance and corruption of life under the Party, Ludwik and Janusz must decide how they will survive; and in their different choices, find themselves torn apart.…
The rare South Asian diasporic novel with a queer lead, Bushra Rehman’s novel is set in the 1980s New York and follows Razia, a second generation Pakistani-American girl living in Queens as she finds strong female friendship with Taslima and eventually falls in love with Angela. But being Pakistani-American means, for Razia, making a difficult choice: home or love.
This novel will resonate deeply with anyone who loves New York or has found themselves on the fringes of their families because of who they are.
Razia Mirza grows up amid the wild grape vines and backyard sunflowers of Corona, Queens, with her best friend, Saima, by her side. When a family rift drives the girls apart, Razia's heart is broken. She finds solace in Taslima, a new girl in her close knit Pakistani-American community. They embark on a series of small rebellions: listening to scandalous music, wearing mini skirts, and cutting school to explore the city.
When Razia is accepted to Stuyvesant, a prestigious high school in Manhattan, the gulf between the person she is and the daughter her parents want her to be, widens.…
There are very few books that capture the particular suffering of loving someone and not being loved back.
Greenwell’s powerful debut novel is one of them. Set in the capital city of Bulgaria, the novel begins with an encounter that the narrator, an American teacher working abroad, has with Mitko, a sex worker. It is written in prose whose beauty, beat by beat, is as achingly beautiful as the unrequited love the narrator has for Mitko. This is one to savor slowly.
My copy is heavily underlined. Garth, a trained opera singer, reads like a dream. Accompany your reading with his readings from the work (they’re on YouTube).
Startlingly erotic and immensely powerful, Garth Greenwell's What Belongs to You tells an unforgettable story about the ways our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love.
Winner of the Debut of the Year Award at the British Book Awards. Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize.
'A searching and compassionate meditation on the slipperiness of desire . . . as beautiful and vivid as poetry' - Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life
On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia's National Palace…
This irreverent biography provides a rare window into the music industry from a promoter’s perspective. From a young age, Peter Jest was determined to make a career in live music, and despite naysayers and obstacles, he did just that, bringing national acts to his college campus atUW-Milwaukee, booking thousands of concerts across Wisconsin and the Midwest, and opening Shank Hall, the beloved Milwaukee venue named after a club in the cult film This Is Spinal Tap.
Jest established lasting friendships with John Prine, Arlo Guthrie, and others, but ultimately, this book tells a universal story of love and hope…
We Had Fun and Nobody Died: Adventures of a Milwaukee Music Promoter
The entertaining and inspiring story of a stubbornly independent promoter and club owner
This irreverent biography provides a rare window into the music industry from a promoter’s perspective. From a young age, Peter Jest was determined to make a career in live music, and despite naysayers and obstacles, he did just that, bringing national acts to his college campus at UW–Milwaukee, booking thousands of concerts across Wisconsin and the Midwest, and opening Shank Hall, the beloved Milwaukee venue named after a club in the cult film This Is Spinal Tap.
This funny, nostalgia-inducing book details the lasting friendships Jest established…
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