The Living Realm

The extraordinary new novel from the author of The Listeners

'Belongs in the firmament of great gay fiction' DOUGLAS STUART

'A beautiful novel' SEÁN HEWITT

'Mesmerising . . . I couldn't put it down' WILLIAM RAYFET HUNTER

The stunning new novel from the 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.

'Belongs in the firmament of great gay fiction' DOUGLAS STUART

'A beautiful novel' SEÁN HEWITT

'Mesmerising . . . I couldn't put it down' WILLIAM RAYFET HUNTER

The stunning new novel from the 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

'The Living Realm is a novel that rises to its subject: the whole of life' GARTH GREENWELL, author of Small Rain

'Tannahill captures so much in a slim, hypnotic novel' TASH AW, author of The South

'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 . . . feels destined to become a classic of queer literature' TOBI COVENTRY, author of He's the Devil

'Remarkable . . . I finished in floods of cleansing tears' JACK PARLETT, author of Flamboyance