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A New York Times Notable Book of 2020
Named one of the best books of 2020 by Time (100 Must-read Books); Kirkus; and The Washington Post (50 Notable Works of Fiction)
In the highly anticipated follow-up to his beloved debut, What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell deepens his exploration of foreignness, obligation, and desire
Sofia, Bulgaria, a landlocked city in southern Europe, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. Soviet buildings crumble, wind scatters sand from the far south, and political protesters flood the streets with song.
In this atmosphere of disquiet, an American teacher navigates a life transformed by the discovery and loss of love. As he prepares to leave the place he's come to call home, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad, each bearing uncanny reminders of his past. A queer student's confession recalls his own first love, a stranger's seduction devolves into paternal sadism, and a romance with another foreigner opens, and heals, old wounds. Each echo reveals startling insights about what it means to seek connection: with those we love, with the places we inhabit, and with our own fugitive selves.
Cleanness revisits and expands the world of Garth Greenwell's beloved debut, What Belongs to You, declared "an instant classic" by The New York Times Book Review. In exacting, elegant prose, he transcribes the strange dialects of desire, cementing his stature as one of our most vital living writers.
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"Greenwell's writing on language, desire, and sex in all their complex choreography vibrates with intensity, reading like brainwaves and heartbeats as much as words....this is in every way an enriching, deepening follow-up." Booklist (Starred Review)
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"Brave and beautiful." Kirkus Review (Starred Review)
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"This is a piercingly observant and meticulously reflective narrative." Publishers Weekly
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"Transfixing." Jake Nevins, The New York Times
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"Beautiful sentences....unfailingly intelligent observations...radiant with kindness....Compassion, that supreme quality in a fiction writer, is a main source of Greenwell's power." Sigrid Nunez, The New York Review of Books
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"An aching examination of intimacy and power." Annabel Gutterman, TIME (Best Books of 2020 So Far)
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"Greenwell is among our finest writers on sex and desire." Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire (Best Books of 2020 So Far)
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"Greenwell is a relentless truth-teller with a poet's eye for detail and a shimmering prose style that's reason enough to read the book." Jim Zarroli, NPR Books (Best Books of 2020)
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"Masterpieces of radical eroticism...a gorgeously varied narrative fabric, amid scenes of more wholesome love, finely sketched vistas of political unrest, haunting evocations of a damaged childhood, and moments of mundane rapture." Alex Ross, The New Yorker (Best Books of 2020)
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"Extraordinary....The range in these stories is part of their triumph and part of what makes their existential sorrow so profound....Incomparably bittersweet....Brilliant." Ron Charles, The Washington Post
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"Incandescent...[Greenwell's] writing about sex is altogether scorching....Greenwell has an uncanny gift, one that comes along rarely." Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Garth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was long-listed for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by more than fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into a dozen languages. Greenwell's fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE, and he has written criticism for The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and New York Times Book Review, among other publications. He lives in Iowa City.
Adam P. on PowellsBooks.Blog
In the late summer of 2002, which is somehow nearly twenty years ago, I moved west across the Mississippi River, from St. Paul, Minnesota to Minneapolis, into a studio apartment just off Nicollet Avenue. I’d spent the previous three years living with friends I’d made while attending a nearby Christian college...
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