A Most-Anticipated Book of 2021: BuzzFeed * The Millions * Cosmopolitan * Electric Literature * LGBTQ Reads * Paperback Paris
One of Advocate's “22 LGBTQ+ Books You Absolutely Need to Read This Year”
“An intimate saga that brims with necessary conversations about cultural identity.” —O, The Oprah Magazine, “32 LGBTQ Books That Will Change the Literary Landscape in 2021”
It is 2015, weeks after the Supreme Court marriage equality ruling, and all Sebastian Mote wants is to settle down. A high school art history teacher, newly single and desperately lonely, he envies his queer students their freedom to live openly the youth he lost to fear and shame.
When he runs into his childhood friend Oscar Burnham at a wedding in Washington, D.C., he can’t help but see it as a second chance. Now thirty-five, the men haven’t seen each other in more than a decade. But Oscar has no interest in their shared history, nor in the sense of belonging Sebastian craves. Instead, he’s outraged by what he sees as the death of gay culture: bars overrun with bachelorette parties, friends coupling off and having babies. For Oscar, conformity isn’t peace, it’s surrender.
While Oscar and Sebastian struggle to find their place in a rapidly changing world, each is drawn into a cross-generational friendship that treads the line between envy and obsession: Sebastian with one of his students, Oscar with an older icon of the AIDS era. And as they collide again and again, both men must reckon not just with one another but with themselves.
Provocative, moving, and rich with sharply drawn characters, Let’s Get Back to the Party introduces an exciting and contemporary new talent.
Genre: Literary Fiction
One of Advocate's “22 LGBTQ+ Books You Absolutely Need to Read This Year”
“An intimate saga that brims with necessary conversations about cultural identity.” —O, The Oprah Magazine, “32 LGBTQ Books That Will Change the Literary Landscape in 2021”
It is 2015, weeks after the Supreme Court marriage equality ruling, and all Sebastian Mote wants is to settle down. A high school art history teacher, newly single and desperately lonely, he envies his queer students their freedom to live openly the youth he lost to fear and shame.
When he runs into his childhood friend Oscar Burnham at a wedding in Washington, D.C., he can’t help but see it as a second chance. Now thirty-five, the men haven’t seen each other in more than a decade. But Oscar has no interest in their shared history, nor in the sense of belonging Sebastian craves. Instead, he’s outraged by what he sees as the death of gay culture: bars overrun with bachelorette parties, friends coupling off and having babies. For Oscar, conformity isn’t peace, it’s surrender.
While Oscar and Sebastian struggle to find their place in a rapidly changing world, each is drawn into a cross-generational friendship that treads the line between envy and obsession: Sebastian with one of his students, Oscar with an older icon of the AIDS era. And as they collide again and again, both men must reckon not just with one another but with themselves.
Provocative, moving, and rich with sharply drawn characters, Let’s Get Back to the Party introduces an exciting and contemporary new talent.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"With gorgeous, searching prose, Zak Salih looks beyond the gay culture wars to find the fractured souls within--and locates something deep and true and universal. This exceptional debut signals the arrival of a compelling new voice in fiction." - Louis Bayard
"Let's Get Back to the Party is a gorgeous, raw, tender, trenchant novel about men figuring out how to live. At once gimlet-eyed and generous to his wonderfully drawn characters--fallible, lovable, and endlessly real--Salih paints a vivid portrait of the paradoxes of queer life in contemporary America, his characters navigating love and friendship in communities shaped both by freedom and fear, and by trauma that is both collective and individual. This is a stellar debut from a huge talent." - Lydia Kiesling
"A miracle of a book. A love letter to queer friendship and queer love . . . that also, in its sparkling prose and exquisite storytelling, announces the arrival of a major talent." - Nick White
"Let's Get Back to the Party is a gorgeous, raw, tender, trenchant novel about men figuring out how to live. At once gimlet-eyed and generous to his wonderfully drawn characters--fallible, lovable, and endlessly real--Salih paints a vivid portrait of the paradoxes of queer life in contemporary America, his characters navigating love and friendship in communities shaped both by freedom and fear, and by trauma that is both collective and individual. This is a stellar debut from a huge talent." - Lydia Kiesling
"A miracle of a book. A love letter to queer friendship and queer love . . . that also, in its sparkling prose and exquisite storytelling, announces the arrival of a major talent." - Nick White
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