Love, Leda by Mark Hyatt

Love, Leda

Kindle Edition

Mark Hyatt

Nightboat Books · Ebook · October 18, 2024

Newly discovered in the author’s archives and published for the first time in the UK in 2023, this portrait of queer, working class London drifts from coffee shop to house party, in search of the next tryst.

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Who it’s for
A compact, discussion-friendly read with romance signals and a critical edge.
Genres
Gay Fiction, Gay Romance, City Life Fiction
Published
Nightboat Books, October 18, 2024

About this book

Newly discovered in the author’s archives and published for the first time in the UK in 2023, this portrait of queer, working class London drifts from coffee shop to house party, in search of the next tryst. Leda is lost. He spends his days steeped in ennui, watching the hours pass, waiting for the night to arrive. Trysts in the rubble of a bombsite follow hours spent in bed with near strangers, as Leda seeks out intimacy in unlikely places.

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Semi-homeless and estranged from his family of origin, he relies on the support of his chosen one: a community of older gay men and divorced women who feed and clothe him, gently encouraging him to find a foothold in a society which excludes him at every turn. And then there is Daniel, a buttoned-up man of the Lord, for whom Leda nurses an unrequited obsession—one which sends him spiraling into self-destruction. Pre-dating the British Sexual Offences Act of 1967, Love Leda was first published in 2023 in the UK. This long lost novel is a portrait of London’s Soho that is now lost, an important document of queer working-class life from a voice long overlooked.

Critical Spark

A compact, discussion-friendly read with romance signals and a critical edge.

Come here for

  • queer literary criticism with a romance pulse
  • politics and love in conversation

Expect

  • book-club fodder
  • sustained narrative read

Where it sits

Gay Fiction81%
City Life Fiction43%
Gay Romance32%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Gay Fiction
  • Bisexual Fiction
  • 20th-Century English Fiction
Authors
Mark Hyatt
Publisher
Nightboat Books
Published
October 18, 2024
Format
Ebook
Reading lane
Gay Fiction