The author of the Booker-shortlisted Real Life returns with a deeply involving new novel of young men and women at a crossroads

**A Book of 2023 in the Guardian, Irish Times, Harper's Bazaar, Esquire and i-D**

In a university town in the American Midwest a circle of lovers and friends navigate tangled webs of connection as they try to work out what they want, and who they are

As they test their own desires in a series of relationships they are confronted by volatile figures in town, from unruly, vulnerable young poets to a local landlord harbouring a lifetime of resentment.

Seamus, Fyodor, Ivan, Noah and Fatima ask themselves and each other- what is the right thing to stake a life on? Work, love, money, dance, poetry? Is love possible without harm? And what does true connection look like in an age of precarity?

'Tender and unflinching ... A wonderful book' Colin Barrett, author of Homesickness

'Taylor is a sharp chronicler of the body' Raven Leilani, author of Luster

'A glimmering study of young humans in brutal times' Jeremy Atherton Lin, author of Gay Bar

About the Author

Brandon Taylor is the author of the novels The Late Americans and Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a Science + Literature Selected Title by the National Book Foundation. His collection Filthy Animals, a US bestseller, was awarded the Story Prize and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He is the 2022-2023 Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.