Promotional Information

An intimate, emotionally rich novel, in which two men - young and old - reckon with queer histories and their place within them, from the critically acclaimed author of We the Animals.

About the Author

JUSTIN TORRES is the author of We the Animals, and has published short fiction in the New Yorker, Harper's and Granta, among other publications. The National Book Foundation named him as one of their '5 under 35' in 2012. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is an Assistant Professor of English at UCLA.

Reviews

Drawing on documents and images from real-life pioneers, the hugely ambitious Blackouts is an intimate, playful account of an old and a young man talking; but it builds into a rich, poetic reclamation of cultural inheritance
*The Guardian*

Erotic and beguiling... An intelligent, loving, and genuinely subversive work
*Eleanor Catton*

Enigmatic, spine-tingling, imbued with inky atmosphere and radiant disclosures - a book like a magic trick
*Jeremy Atherton Lin*

All intelligence and surprises. Ambitious, disarming, full of a kind of daring that winks as it passes-as if David Wojnarowicz rewrote Nabokov's Pale Fire and then left it for years in an abandoned building, just for you
*Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel*

A master of the urgent, surprising sentence... A narrative that is as much about what is on the page as what has been painstakingly cut away... A stunning achievement of re-creation, imagination and tender, tender care. Read it and feel held
*Angela Flournoy, author of The Turner House*

I'm crushed out on Justin Torres's writing: charming, sexy, soft, and full of truth. His words cut like Cupid's arrow
*Brontez Purnell, author of 100 Boyfriends*

Blackouts is unequivocally brilliant, bold, and structurally inventive. Justin Torres has written a shamelessly vital novel that reminds us all not to give up on ourselves, on one another, or on our stories
*Angie Cruz, author of Dominicana and How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water*

I felt deep joy in reading Justin Torres' new novel of queer histories and erasure. Shapeshifting and ambitious, it's super special and speaks to where we are now, through our collective queer past
*Niven Govinden*

Wonderful. A dexterous, searing exploration of queer lives that leaves you quietly reeling
*Irenosen Okojie*