Book cover of The Kingdom of Sand

Book description

The Kingdom of Sand is a poignant tale of desire and dread-Andrew Holleran's first new book in sixteen years. The nameless narrator is a gay man who moved to Florida to look after his aging parents-during the height of the AIDS epidemic-and has found himself unable to leave after their…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Kingdom of Sand as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Andrew Holleran is my favorite gay writer, and one of my favorite writers overall, because his powers of description are so sumptuous and vivid that he can make even the most banal things, like what summertime dusk looks and feels like on a boring suburban street, transformatively beautiful, almost hallucinatory.

He has also taken autofiction to the highest levels of artistry, from his most famous book, Dancer from the Dance, about hedonistic and empty gay life in early 1970s NYC, to all the subsequent books, which chart the life cycle for a gay man without a partner or children.

As…

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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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