The Living Realm

'Beautiful, hugely ambitious' GARTH GREENWELL 'I devoured each page' DOUGLAS STUART 'Hypnotic' TASH AW The lyrical new novel from Jordan Tannahill, the acclaimed author of The Listeners, follows a British archaeologist in Berlin who begins to see his dead lovers at a lake and cruising forest on the outskirts of the city. 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. Over the course of one long, hot summer with friends and lovers at the lake, this first sighting sets off a string of strange encounters. As the man learns more of Teufelssee, he finds himself venturing deeper into the mystery of the surrounding forest. He begins to wonder if these meetings are real or imagined, if they take place in the past or the present, and what they might reveal about the nature of time itself and his place within its flow. Part ghost story, part love story, this ecstatic, sexy and exquisitely written novel offers an elegy to the ways our lives become entangled with history, the natural world and those we love. 'An unflinchingly beautiful novel ... belongs in the firmament of great gay fiction' DOUGLAS STUART, author of John of John 'Playful yet melancholic ... asks what it means to build a life and a community in the margins' TASH AW, author of The South 'A novel that rises to its subject: the whole of life' GARTH GREENWELL, author of Small Rain

Jordan Tannahill is the author of two previous novels, Liminal (2018), which received France's Prix des Jeunes Libraires, and The Listeners (2021), which was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and adapted into a major BBC drama series. He has twice received Canada's Governor General's Award for Drama. His plays and performance texts have been presented at venues including the Young Vic Theatre, Festival d'Avignon, Deutsches Theater (Berlin), Volkstheater (Vienna), and on the West End. His most recent play, Prince Faggot, premiered at Playwrights Horizons in 2025, before running Off-Broadway for seven months.