My Lover, The Rabbi by Wayne Koestenbaum

Publishes 26 March
 
To the untrained eye, the rabbi is far from desirable. He is lofty and unkempt, he is ageing and his congregation is ever diminishing. But to one man, he is the object of obsession.
 
Our narrator adores the rabbi and worships the universe between his legs. But so too does he bristle at being relegated to the peripheries of the rabbi’s life. When they’re apart, he manically contemplates every element of the rabbi’s being: his absent husband; his first (and only) wife and child, both now deceased; his unstable, yet alluring, adopted son. Until, in a bid to help sustain their relationship, our narrator embarks on an increasingly urgent quest to better understand his mercurial lover – one which threatens to upturn the lives of both men.
 
Lavish and lascivious, My Lover, the Rabbi is an exuberant exploration of devotion and desire, as well as a careening Catherine wheel of a novel about queer family-making, one which is attuned to the mysterious constellations and patterns that shape our lives.
 
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'Like Ingeborg Bachman's Malina, My Lover, the Rabbi circles and penetrates the outer edges of perception and experience. It's a brilliant book, written with manic zeal and cool strategy.' - Chris Kraus
 
'My literary version of heaven. Neurotic erotic bliss.' - Melissa Broder
 
'Ecstatic, erotic, electric, and utterly captivating. You won't read anything else like it this year, possibly ever.' - Andrew McMillan