The Living Realm

‘Beautiful, hugely ambitious … The Living Realm is a novel that rises to its subject: the whole of life’ GARTH GREENWELL

‘An unflinchingly beautiful novel … an elegy to friendship, grief and lovers lost’ DOUGLAS STUART

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

The small glacial lake Teufelssee on the outskirts of Berlin has become an infamous cruising destination. While walking its secret but well-trodden paths one evening, a British expat spots a stranger in the distance who bears an uncanny resemblance to his long-dead lover. Over the course of one long, hot summer, this first encounter sets of a string of strange and inexplicable encounters, all unfolding when the man is cruising or partying in the forest. He begins to wonder if these meetings are real or imagined, if they take place in the past or the present, all leading him to question the nature of time itself and his place within its flow.

Part ghost story and part love story, this is an ecstatic, elegiac, sexy and exquisitely written novel from a blazing talent.

Reviews

Praise for The Living Realm:

‘It’s rare to read a novel that expresses so powerfully the wonder of existing in time alongside others: the possibilities this offers for loving and being loved, the obligations love imposes. The final pages of this beautiful, hugely ambitious book amazed me. The Living Realm is a novel that rises to its subject: the whole of life’ Garth Greenwell, author of Small Rain

‘At once an unflinchingly beautiful novel about queer desire, summer days, and casual sex, that is also an elegy to friendship, grief, and lovers lost. Startlingly brave and brilliantly told, I devoured each page not sure what to expect next. The Living Realm belongs in the firmament of great gay fiction’ Douglas Stuart, author of John of John

About the author

Jordan Tannahill is a Canadian playwright and novelist. Two of his plays have won a Governor General’s Literary Award, Canada’s highest state honour for literature. His debut novel, Liminal, won France's 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires. His second novel, The Listeners, was a Canadian bestseller, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize 2021 and adapted into a major BBC drama series.