The Living Realm

‘Belongs in the firmament of great gay fiction’ DOUGLAS STUART
‘Beautiful, hugely ambitious’ GARTH GREENWELL
‘A slim, hypnotic novel’ TASH AW

The stunning new novel from Jordan Tannahill, acclaimed author of The Listeners, follows a British expat in Berlin who begins to see his dead lovers at a cruising lake on the outskirts of the city.

While cruising one evening by Teufelssee, a small glacial lake in the Grunewald forest on the edge of Berlin, a man spots a handsome stranger who bears an uncanny resemblance to his former lover. Only, Lukas died nearly thirty years ago. Yet the man cannot shake the feeling that it was really Lukas he saw.
Over the course of one long, hot summer with friends and lovers at the lake, this first sighting sets off a string of strange encounters. As the man learns more of Teufelssee, he finds himself venturing deeper into the mystery of the surrounding forest. He begins to wonder if these meetings are real or imagined, if they take place in the past or the present, and what they might reveal about the nature of time itself and his place within its flow.
Part ghost story, part love story, this ecstatic, sexy and exquisitely written novel offers an elegy to the ways our lives become entangled with history, the natural world and those we love.
‘A glimpse of the sublime … this book transforms farewell into summer without end’ JEREMY ATHERTON LIN, author of Deep House
‘Unflinchingly beautiful … an elegy to friendship, grief, and lovers lost’ DOUGLAS STUART, author of John of John
‘The Living Realm is a novel that rises to its subject: the whole of life’ GARTH GREENWELL, author of Small Rain
‘Sleek, dreamy, mysterious … An expertly crafted ghost story overflowing with life’ SAMANTHA JOSEPHS, author of Carrying
‘A deeply tender and mystical meditation on desire and aging … left me breathless’ HUW LEMMEY, co-author of Bad Gays: A Homosexual History
‘Haunting, sexy and life affirming … Jordan Tannahill is truly one of our greats’ TOBI COVENTRY, author of He’s the Devil