PublishedGranta, January 2024 |
ISBN9781847083975 |
FormatHardcover, 320 pages |
Dimensions21.6cm × 13.5cm × 2.2cm |
An intimate, emotionally rich novel, in which two men - young and old - reckon with queer histories and their place within them, from the critically acclaimed author of We the Animals
Juan Gay is on his deathbed. He has decided to spend his last days in The Palace: a monumental, fading institution in the desert, which was an asylum in another lifetime. There, a young man tends to this dying soul - someone who Juan met only once, but who has haunted the edges of his life ever since.
As the end approaches, the two trade stories - resurrecting lost loves, lives, mothers and fathers - and their lives are woven, ineluctably, into a broader story of pathology and oppression. Charged with sifting through Juan's belongings, our narrator uncovers a copy of Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, its pages blacked out, censored, reduced down to poetic dispatches. And, as he sifts through the manuscript, another story is told: that of Jan Gay - a radical, queer anthropologist - whose ground-breaking work was co-opted, and stifled, by the committee she served.
Blackouts is a haunting, dreamlike rumination on memory and erasure, blending fact with fiction - drawing from historical records, screenplays, testimony and image - to force us to look again at the world we have inherited and the narratives we have received.
David has a background in mental health and management in the not-for-profit sector. He enjoys assisting customers with their reading choices particularly around issues to do with leadership, HR management and mental health & psychology.
A unique blend of LGBTIQ fiction and history that demonstrates the power of our stories and storytelling despite the attempts to erase and re-write our truths. An important new work from the author of "We the Animals"
