The Gallopers

Winner of the Polari Book Award 2024

From the author of The Whale Tattoo, Winner of the Polari First Book Prize 2023

1953. Eli is nineteen years old and lives alongside a cursed field with his strange aunt Dreama. Six months before, his mother disappeared during the North Sea flood. Unsure of his place in the world and of the man he is becoming, Eli is ready to run. Shane Wright is a man with plenty to hide. Caught in a complicated relationship with Eli, Shane is desperate to maintain the double life that he has created for himself. Then Jimmy Smart appears. Jimmy Smart, the mysterious showman who turns the gallopers at the fair. Under his watchful gaze, Eli discovers a world he knows nothing about with rules he cannot understand. Three men bound together in a blistering story that spans 30 years, from 1953 into the 1980s and the AIDS epidemic, The Gallopers is a visceral and mesmerising novel of deceit, desire and unspeakable loss.