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The Living Realm
Not yet published
Expected 28 Jan 27 Belongs in the firmament of great gay fiction’ DOUGLAS STUART
‘Beautiful, hugely ambitious’ GARTH GREENWELL
‘A slim, hypnotic novel’ TASH AW
The stunning new novel from Jordan Tannahill, acclaimed author of The Listeners , follows a British expat in Berlin who begins to see his dead lovers at a cruising lake 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.
‘Beautiful, hugely ambitious’ GARTH GREENWELL
‘A slim, hypnotic novel’ TASH AW
The stunning new novel from Jordan Tannahill, acclaimed author of The Listeners , follows a British expat in Berlin who begins to see his dead lovers at a cruising lake 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.
224 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication January 28, 2027
About the author
Jordan Tannahill
24 books146 followersJordan Tannahill is a Canadian novelist and playwright based in London.
His debut novel, Liminal, won France's 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires. His second novel, The Listeners, was a Canadian bestseller, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Giller Prize.
Tannahill is the author of several plays, and the book of essays, Theatre of the Unimpressed.
In 2019, CBC Arts named Tannahill as one of sixty-nine LGBTQ Canadians, living or deceased, who has shaped the country's history.
His debut novel, Liminal, won France's 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires. His second novel, The Listeners, was a Canadian bestseller, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Giller Prize.
Tannahill is the author of several plays, and the book of essays, Theatre of the Unimpressed.
In 2019, CBC Arts named Tannahill as one of sixty-nine LGBTQ Canadians, living or deceased, who has shaped the country's history.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 18, 2026
The narrator of this novella is an archaeologist living in Berlin. He and his friends Gabor and Birgit spend a lot of time at Grunewald forest, relaxing, swimming, and cruising. The narrator begins seeing his dead lovers in the forest, which he finds puzzling and his friends grow increasingly concerned about.
I appreciated this meditation on life, death, caretaking, and friendship. This novella casts a spell: while reading, I was completely immersed in it, but when I put it down it felt like a dream I’d had. This is not a criticism. I found this read deeply moving, and it prompted reflection on what makes a life meaningful. Highly recommended.
Thank you to NetGalley and FSG for allowing me to read an ARC of this title.
I appreciated this meditation on life, death, caretaking, and friendship. This novella casts a spell: while reading, I was completely immersed in it, but when I put it down it felt like a dream I’d had. This is not a criticism. I found this read deeply moving, and it prompted reflection on what makes a life meaningful. Highly recommended.
Thank you to NetGalley and FSG for allowing me to read an ARC of this title.
June 16, 2026
“There was something beyond joy or idle leisure, something closer to worship, in that kind of bearing witness, in observing the ways time played upon nature, and the bodies of others.”
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
A slight though potent novel, my favorite kind. Composed of crystal clear writing, The Living Realm is immediately compelling and sensual, full to the brim of equal parts beauty and melancholy.
Our protagonist spends a drought-stricken summer in Berlin's Grunewald forest. The lazy sun soaked days stretch out before him, full of swimming in the lake, sunbathing with his friends, and hitting the local cruising grove. But as the heat intensifies and the summer progresses, he begins seeing several of his former lovers (all now dead) in and around the wooded lake.
It feels glib to call this novel “beautiful” the way it feels flippant to call a parent’s death family “sad. The writing is atmospheric, evocative, and profound all at once. It feels too big for such a trivial adjective. While reading I felt I was in the Grunewald, I could smell the sunbaked forest and feel the cold spots of deep lake water. Paired with shimmering prose, the character work is also remarkably strong. By the end I came to care for these people who felt more like real acquaintances than like fictional creations. I tore through this book and immediately wished I could read it again for the first time, this is one of those novels.
The Living Realm is a love letter to human connection and to life in its countless forms. A book about how relationships, fragile and transitory though they seem, might also be the most powerful thing we have, how they can transcend space, time, even death. If you read one book this summer, read this one.
Our protagonist spends a drought-stricken summer in Berlin's Grunewald forest. The lazy sun soaked days stretch out before him, full of swimming in the lake, sunbathing with his friends, and hitting the local cruising grove. But as the heat intensifies and the summer progresses, he begins seeing several of his former lovers (all now dead) in and around the wooded lake.
It feels glib to call this novel “beautiful” the way it feels flippant to call a parent’s death family “sad. The writing is atmospheric, evocative, and profound all at once. It feels too big for such a trivial adjective. While reading I felt I was in the Grunewald, I could smell the sunbaked forest and feel the cold spots of deep lake water. Paired with shimmering prose, the character work is also remarkably strong. By the end I came to care for these people who felt more like real acquaintances than like fictional creations. I tore through this book and immediately wished I could read it again for the first time, this is one of those novels.
The Living Realm is a love letter to human connection and to life in its countless forms. A book about how relationships, fragile and transitory though they seem, might also be the most powerful thing we have, how they can transcend space, time, even death. If you read one book this summer, read this one.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
THE LIVING REALM by Jordan Tannahill is a remarkably singular novel - slight in size, but strangely vast in effect. It looks like something you could move through quickly, but it doesn’t behave that way at all. It slows you down, pulls you back, and makes you reread without really asking permission.
Tannahill’s prose is stunning. It has this fluid, almost breath-like quality, where meaning keeps shifting just slightly as you move through it. I kept finding myself stopping mid-paragraph - not because I was lost, but because I didn’t want to miss what was happening in the language itself. And then I’d go back and read it again anyway.
It becomes less about “following” a story and more about staying inside a particular way of seeing and feeling. At times it feels like a series of interconnected poems - alive, restless, full of movement and light. It’s the kind of book where reading slowly isn’t just better, it feels necessary.
There’s also a real sense of mystery running through it. I don’t think I understood everything it’s doing, and I’m not sure I’m supposed to. It feels intentionally open, like it’s more interested in experience than explanation.
This is not a book you finish and move on from. It’s one you drift through, return to, and let stay with you longer than you expect.
Tannahill’s prose is stunning. It has this fluid, almost breath-like quality, where meaning keeps shifting just slightly as you move through it. I kept finding myself stopping mid-paragraph - not because I was lost, but because I didn’t want to miss what was happening in the language itself. And then I’d go back and read it again anyway.
It becomes less about “following” a story and more about staying inside a particular way of seeing and feeling. At times it feels like a series of interconnected poems - alive, restless, full of movement and light. It’s the kind of book where reading slowly isn’t just better, it feels necessary.
There’s also a real sense of mystery running through it. I don’t think I understood everything it’s doing, and I’m not sure I’m supposed to. It feels intentionally open, like it’s more interested in experience than explanation.
This is not a book you finish and move on from. It’s one you drift through, return to, and let stay with you longer than you expect.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
THE LIVING REALM will haunt me forever. I will read it again, and again, and again.
The story follows a British archaeologist who has lived in Berlin for many years, through the AIDS pandemic, and into the modern era. He visits a Berlin forest preserve frequently and, suddenly, sees his long-dead lover. Then he sees other past lovers, who are as real as he is. Are they real? Is he crazy? Is the forest magic?
Mostly, I felt the grief of young love. As a young man myself, deeply in love and building a beautiful life with a beloved partner, I felt the pain of years passing me by. Through poetic language, rich symbolism, and fully realized characters, Tannahill guided me through deep emotions that I have yet to fully feel.
This is a painful book. It hurts. And yet, I will return as my life progresses and I bring new experiences to this beautiful novella.
The story follows a British archaeologist who has lived in Berlin for many years, through the AIDS pandemic, and into the modern era. He visits a Berlin forest preserve frequently and, suddenly, sees his long-dead lover. Then he sees other past lovers, who are as real as he is. Are they real? Is he crazy? Is the forest magic?
Mostly, I felt the grief of young love. As a young man myself, deeply in love and building a beautiful life with a beloved partner, I felt the pain of years passing me by. Through poetic language, rich symbolism, and fully realized characters, Tannahill guided me through deep emotions that I have yet to fully feel.
This is a painful book. It hurts. And yet, I will return as my life progresses and I bring new experiences to this beautiful novella.
June 19, 2026
Thank you for the ARC Net Galley
Some books entertain you for a few days. The Living Realm lingers in your bloodstream long after the final page. It captures the unbearable tenderness of being human, how people drift into our lives, alter us quietly, and remain there even after they’re gone. Every relationship in this book feels ephemeral, almost fragile enough to break at the touch, yet it argues that these fleeting connections are the closest thing we have to immortality.
Reading it felt like standing in the middle of grief, love, memory, and hope all at once. Rarely does a book make life itself feel this sacred. If summer gives you space for only one story, make it The Living Realm.
Some books entertain you for a few days. The Living Realm lingers in your bloodstream long after the final page. It captures the unbearable tenderness of being human, how people drift into our lives, alter us quietly, and remain there even after they’re gone. Every relationship in this book feels ephemeral, almost fragile enough to break at the touch, yet it argues that these fleeting connections are the closest thing we have to immortality.
Reading it felt like standing in the middle of grief, love, memory, and hope all at once. Rarely does a book make life itself feel this sacred. If summer gives you space for only one story, make it The Living Realm.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This book reminded me so much of the recent film, "All of Us Strangers", which was similarly a queer work of art that dealt with memory, ghosts, and the lasting marks love leaves on people even when we are no longer - for lack of a better word - a part of the living realm. I enjoyed the opening so much that as the plot unfolded (and I got a sense of where it was all headed), I was somewhat disappointed. Tannahill is a gifted writer; this is additionally an amazing concept, but it falls flat when we approach the mid-to-end point, wherein I felt a bit cheated by the turn of the plot. Worth a read for the prose alone! Gorgeous.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
What a beautiful novel. There are so many little moments in this book that just took my breath away. Jordan Tannahill has a way of looking at the small parts of life and magnifying it to show their significance. It made me tear up multiple times just by the sheer beauty of the writing. This book reminded me of my place in the world and my connection with everything that has come before and everything that will come.
Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the ARC.
Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the ARC.
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June 9, 2026The Living Realm moves through friction between humor and bodily precarity, perhaps stronger in the porousness it sustains between time and intimacy than in narrative drive—though it leaves its own afterglow. Full review available here.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This book is haunting in all the best ways -- but it isn't really a ghost story. Perhaps it's better considered as a reflection. Of what, or of whom, is perhaps a different question altogether.
Tannahill's writing is lyrical and elegant; it's full of mystery and emotion and connection.
Highly recommend.
Tannahill's writing is lyrical and elegant; it's full of mystery and emotion and connection.
Highly recommend.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Beautiful
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
beautiful. an elegy inscribed in the soil. grief and love refracted through our reflections in the lake.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Jordan’s writing is so beautifully rendered and I love his obsessions with research and history and the idiosyncratic aspects of queer life.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
THE book of the summer
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Although this is the author's third novel, most will know him, as I do, as a ferociously talented playwright, most recently of the controversial and award-winning Prince Faggot, which I also loved. None of his previous works quite prepared me, however, for this stunning short work that manages to cover such a multitude of life's most essential subjects - time, love, death, connection, sex, nature, morality, art, responsibility, etc., etc. - and do so with unerringly precise prose and thoughtful nuance.
It's the type of book you want to buy multiple copies of and thrust it into the hands of everyone you know and scream: JUST READ IT!! NOW!! Mine is not the only voice proclaiming this a masterpiece - it's also garnered effusive praise from the likes of Douglas Stuart, Tash Aw and Garth Greenwell, and has nearly all 5-star ratings, so far.
Oddly, this book begins very similarly to the latest Philippe Besson book I just finished, The Summer Boy, with a man encountering an old lover from 30 years before who could not possibly exist in the here and now - but then they go in completely different directions.
I also thought it had echoes of both Alain Giraudie's film Stranger by the Lake, and Andrew Haigh's All of us Strangers, while being completely unique and original. The last 10 pages, a phenomenal tour de force from the consciousness of a feral pig (!!), is some of the best writing I've encountered in a very long time.
There is no doubt in my mind that not only will this make my top 3 reads of 2026, but that I will come back and reread it (it only takes about 4 hours), once I've had more time to process and digest. AND will buy a hardcopy edition when it comes out in Sept. for my collection - I love the gorgeous cover, too! I've already ordered copies of Tannahill's other two novels.
Many thanks to Netgalley and to FS&G for the ARC in exchange for this honest and wildly enthusiastic review.
It's the type of book you want to buy multiple copies of and thrust it into the hands of everyone you know and scream: JUST READ IT!! NOW!! Mine is not the only voice proclaiming this a masterpiece - it's also garnered effusive praise from the likes of Douglas Stuart, Tash Aw and Garth Greenwell, and has nearly all 5-star ratings, so far.
Oddly, this book begins very similarly to the latest Philippe Besson book I just finished, The Summer Boy, with a man encountering an old lover from 30 years before who could not possibly exist in the here and now - but then they go in completely different directions.
I also thought it had echoes of both Alain Giraudie's film Stranger by the Lake, and Andrew Haigh's All of us Strangers, while being completely unique and original. The last 10 pages, a phenomenal tour de force from the consciousness of a feral pig (!!), is some of the best writing I've encountered in a very long time.
There is no doubt in my mind that not only will this make my top 3 reads of 2026, but that I will come back and reread it (it only takes about 4 hours), once I've had more time to process and digest. AND will buy a hardcopy edition when it comes out in Sept. for my collection - I love the gorgeous cover, too! I've already ordered copies of Tannahill's other two novels.
Many thanks to Netgalley and to FS&G for the ARC in exchange for this honest and wildly enthusiastic review.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews