Literary Gay Male Fiction Greats
Explore the finest literary gay male fiction with our curated list of iconic books. Discover groundbreaking novels, celebrated authors, and timeless LGBTQ+ stories that shaped queer literature.
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Was
by Geoff Ryman
This haunting, wildly original novel explores the lives of several characters entwined by The Wizard of Oz--both the novel written by L. Frank Baum and the strangely resonant 1939 film. Was traverses the American landscape to reveal how the human imagination transcends the bleakest circumstance.
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Dancer from the Dance
by Andrew Holleran
One of the most important works of gay literature, this haunting, brilliant novel is a seriocomic remembrance of things past -- and still poignantly present. It depicts the adventures of Malone, a beautiful young man searching for love amid New York's emerging gay scene. From Manhattan's Everard Baths and after-hours discos to Fire Island's deserted parks and lavish orgies, Malone looks high and low for meaningful companionship. The person he finds is Sutherland, a campy quintessential queen -- and one of the most memorable literary creations of contemporary fiction. Hilarious, witty, and ultimately heartbreaking, Dancer from the Dance is truthful, provocative, outrageous fiction told in a voice as close to laughter as to tears.
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The Counterfeiters
by Andre Gide
A young artist pursues a search for knowledge through the treatment of homosexuality and the collapse of morality in middle class France.
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The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon
by Tom Spanbauer
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is an American epic of the old West for our own times -- a novel huge in its imaginative scope and daring in its themes. The narrator is Shed, or Duivichi-un-Dua, a half-breed bisexual boy who makes his living at the Indian Head Hotel in the little turn-of-the-century town of Excellent, Idaho. The imperious Ida Richilieu is Shed's employer, the town's mayor and the mistress, and the mistress and owner of this outrageously pink whorehouse. Together with the beautiful prostitute Alma Hatch, and the philosophical, green-eyed, half-crazy cowboy Dellwood Barker, this collection of misfits and outcasts make up the core of Shed's eccentric family. And although laced with the ugliness and cruelty of the frontier West -- Shed is raped by the same man who then murders the woman he thinks is his mother, and the Mormon townspeople bring a fiery end to Ida's raucous way of life -- the love and acceptance that tie this family together provide the true heart of this novel. The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is a beautifully told, mythic tale that is as well a profound meditation on sexualty,race and man's relationship to himself and the natural world.
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In a Shallow Grave
by James Purdy
Severly disfigured in the war, Garnet Montrose returns to his fifty-acre farm on the Virginia coast, where he enlists the assistance of hired helpers and of Widow Rance in effecting his rehabilitation