The Living Realm

Description

“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. The Living Realm belongs in the firmament of great gay fiction.“ –Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize-winning author of John of John

“Strange, sexy, and sad, The Living Realm goes to wild places while still feeling incredibly human.” –Josh Silver, author of Fruit Fly

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. As the man spends a long, hot summer by the lake, he continues to encounter Lukas, and then other lost lovers as well. As he attempts to make sense of the strange occurrences and learns more of Teufelssee, he finds himself venturing deeper into the mystery of the forest, leading him to question not just his sanity but the nature of time itself.

Written with the lyricism and erudition that have made Jordan Tannahill an internationally celebrated playwright, The Living Realm is a moving, dreamlike novel and an elegy to the ways our lives become entangled with history, the natural world, and those we love.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Author: Jordan Tannahill
Published: 09/08/2026
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 9780374621728
Pages: 160
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 0.80″ H x 8.40″ L x 5.50″ W

About the Author
Jordan Tannahill is a playwright and a novelist. His debut novel, Liminal, received France’s 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires. His second novel, The Listeners, was short-listed for the 2021 Giller Prize and adapted into a limited series for the BBC. His most recent play, Prince Faggot, ran off-Broadway for seven months in 2025. He has twice won Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, and his work has been presented at venues including the Young Vic Theatre and Sadler’s Wells in London, the Kitchen and Lincoln Center in New York City, the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, and elsewhere. He lives in New York City with his husband.