setting out for Ithaka

The Portrait of an Englishman in His Chateau - Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues

Dedalus Books

When the unnamed narrator crosses the causeway to the Chateau of Gamehuche, he enters a surrealist nightmare of debauchery and violence. The proceedings at the chateau are presided over by the master of Gamehuche, M. de Montcul, formerly the English diplomat, Sir Horatio Mountarse. With a cast of willing and not-so-willing acolytes, he serves up an over-refined cuisine of obscenity, sexual perversion and unspeakable cruelty. The book could be described as a dispatch written from the frontiers of depravity.

The Thief's Journal - Jean Genet

Grove Press

he Thief's Journal by Jean Genet, with an intro by Patti Smith / ISBN 9780802128270 / 272-page paperback from Grove Press

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First published in France in 1949, The Thief’s Journal is Jean Genet’s iconic work of autobiographical fiction. This new edition brings his legendary genius to future generations of readers, with an introduction by Genet’s great admirer, Patti Smith.

From a prison cell, the journal’s narrator recounts his travels across Europe in the 1930s―as a vagabond, pickpocket, and occasional prostitute―in pursuit of spiritual fulfillment through erotic trysts and evil deeds. Worshiping his own holy trinity of homosexuality, theft, and betrayal, he conducts every burglary, and each sexual encounter, with the elaborate, reverent ritual of a religious ceremony. Dressed in rags and stealing for his survival, he must evade the authorities for as long as possible.

Prince Connor

Tiepolo Blue

by James Cahill

Exiled from his university position for an inexcusable blunder, art historian Don Lamb flees to London, a city alive with sex and creativity. There, over the course of a long, hot summer, as he is immersed in the anarchic art and gay scenes of the mid-90s, Don sees his carefully curated life irrevocably changed. But his epiphany is also a reckoning, as his unexamined past is revealed to him in a devastating new light.

Young Mungo

by Douglas Stuart

Douglas Stuart's Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the meaning of masculinity, the push and pull of family, the violence faced by so many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.

Born under different stars, Protestant Mungo and Catholic James live in a hyper-masculine world. They are caught between two of Glasgow's housing estates, where young working-class men divide themselves along sectarian lines, and fight territorial battles for the sake of reputation.

They should be sworn enemies if they're to be seen as men at all, and yet as they begin to fall in love, they dream of escape, and Mungo must work hard to hide his true self from all those around him.

Wolfgang Tillmans: “Art doesn’t have a purpose”

The photographer on the decline of the London art scene post-Brexit, coming out at 16, and political responsibility.

By Ellen Peirson-Hagger