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The Kingdom of Sand
- Author
- Andrew Holleran
- Narrator
- David Pittu
- Publisher
- Random House
- Publish Date
- 6 March 2025
- Run Time
- 8 hours 31 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
Out in the drought-struck backwaters of rural Florida, The Kingdom of Sand's nameless narrator lives a life of semi-solitude, enjoying the odd, fleeting sexual encounter and the friendship of a few.
His world is ageing, and the memories of another time flash, then fade - visions of parties filled with handsome young men, the parents whom he chose to spend his life besides, the generation he once knew, struck down by AIDS. But, when forced to watch the slow demise of a close neighbour, he is drawn back to the here and now, and his own borrowed time in this kingdom of sand.
'Affecting and engaging' COLM TÓIBÍN
'A wistful, witty meditation on a gay man's twilight years and the twilight of America' Guardian
'Bracingly honest and wise' The Times, Books of the Year
'Both melancholy and hilarious' New York Times
© Andrew Holleran 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
Critics Review
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[Holleran's] new novel is all the more affecting and engaging because the images of isolation and old age here are haunted . . . in 1978 Holleran wrote the quintessential novel about gay abandon, the sheer, careless pleasure of it: Dancer From the Dance. Now, at almost 80 years of age, he has produced a novel remarkable for its integrity, for its readiness to embrace difficult truths and for its complex way of paying homage to the passing of time
New York Times
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Bracingly honest and wise... A beautiful way to describe how we fade away.
The Times, *Books of the Year*
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Holleran's fifth novel - both melancholy and hilarious - finds the protagonist living out his days in his late mother's Florida home, navigating loneliness, a changing world and a life post-cruising. The book's image of isolation and old age is all the more haunting because in 1978 Holleran wrote the quintessential novel about the sheer, careless pleasure of gay abandon, Dancer From the Dance.
New York Times
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[With] grim wit and flashes of sanctity from above... Holleran's writing is as calmly compelling as the repetitive tasks that occupy a monastic day.
Observer
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Holleran renders an elegiac and very funny contemplation of not just ageing but an age... A wistful, witty meditation on a gay man's twilight years and the twilight of America.
Guardian
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Both melancholy and hilarious... Haunting.
New York Times
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An unexpectedly timely novel - wise, shrewd, and in its way, kind, if honesty is ever kind. And written with the sure hand of a master.
Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
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Every one of [Andrew Holleran's] books is a gem. If he were straight, his reputation would be immense. The beauty of his language, the empathy for his characters and the world he writes about, are unsurpassed by any other gay writing of our time... He is our Fitzgerald and Hemingway but for one thing: he writes better than both of them.
Larry Kramer, author of The Normal Heart
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Andrew Holleran writes about desire so beautifully it's occasionally forgotten that he's one of the best living novelists on friendship. This tender, often very funny novel is a book about that final field of play between friends, when all the masks are removed. I wish it never ended.
John Freeman, author of The Tyranny of Email
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Accomplished . . . Holleran is, as always, sharply observant when it comes to human relationships . . . The writing throughout exhibits the same clinical brilliance that Holleran made his own in his rightly acclaimed first novel, Dancer from the Dance, fifty years ago. His prose remains unnervingly precise in every detail. It is also wryly comic.
Literary Review
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Details
- Author
- Andrew Holleran
- Narrator
- David Pittu
- Duration
- 8 hours 31 minutes
- Release Date
- 6 March 2025
- ISBN
- 9781529961294
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Random House
- Genre
- Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Narrative theme: death, grief, loss, Health, illness or addiction: social aspects, Narrative theme: interior life / psychological fiction, Narrative theme: love / relationships, Erotic fiction / Erotica
Synopsis
Brought to you by Penguin. Out in the drought-struck backwaters of rural Florida, The Kingdom of Sand's nameless narrator lives a life of semi-solitude, enjoying the odd, fleeting sexual encounter and the friendship of a few.His world is ageing, and the memories of another time flash, then fade - visions of parties filled with handsome young men, the parents whom he chose to spend his life besides, the generation he once knew, struck down by AIDS. But, when forced to watch the slow demise of a close neighbour, he is drawn back to the here and now, and his own borrowed time in this kingdom of sand.'Affecting and engaging' COLM TÓIBÍN'A wistful, witty meditation on a gay man's twilight years and the twilight of America' Guardian'Bracingly honest and wise' The Times, Books of the Year'Both melancholy and hilarious' New York Times© Andrew Holleran 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
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