Strange Relations

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD 2025*

Remarkable... entertaining... deft... moving... refreshing
Daily Telegraph

A richly rewarding account of a resonant cultural moment
Guardian

Textured literary portraits of the masculine mind and body
Raymond Antrobus, author of The Perseverance

In 1960, James Baldwin decisively diagnosed the troubled state of American society as a failure of the masculine sensibility.

Strange Relations explores this mid-century crisis through the lives and works of four bisexual writers: Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, John Cheever, and James Baldwin.

In a mesmerising blend of biography and cultural criticism, Ralf Webb examines how these writers challenged the damaging restrictions of contemporary gender and sexuality, and how, through both their art and relationships, they sought a transformative new masculinity - one grounded in fluidity, love and intimacy.

Webbs writing is of a quality rarely seen, and his book returns you to the world slightly changed, equipped with another angle of vision on the quiddity of man
Diarmuid Hester, author of Nothing Ever Just Disappears

Impeccably well researched and hugely enjoyable
Nicole Flattery, author of Nothing Special

Wise, hopeful, and exquisitely written
Will Tosh, author of Straight Acting