An Apartment on Uranus

by Paul B. Preciado, Virginie Despentes (Introduction), Charlotte Mandell (Translator)

Uranus is the coldest planet in the solar system, a frozen giant named after a Greek deity. It is also the inspiration for Uranism, a concept coined by the writer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1864 to define the ‘third sex’ and the rights of those who ‘love differently’. Following in Ulrichs’s footsteps, Paul B. Preciado dreams of an apartment on Uranus where he can live, free of the modern power taxonomies of race, gender, class or disability. In this bold and transgressive book, Preciado recounts his transformation from Beatriz into Paul B., and examines other processes of political, cultural and sexual transition, reflecting on socio-political issues including the rise of neo-fascism in Europe, the criminalization of migrants, the harassment of trans children, the technological appropriation of the uterus, and the role artists and museums might play in the writing of a new social contract. A stepchild of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, Preciado argues, with courage and conviction, for a planetary revolution of all living beings against the norm.

‘Paul B. Preciado has the magic ability to fire off imperatives that don’t feel bossy, but rather incite us to join him in whatever crackling energy, urgent curiosity, and dynamic nomadism is flowing through him. Reading these chronological missives offers the real pleasure of Preciado’s company in time, and inspires us not just to stay with our trouble, but to greet it with unstoppable speech, complex solidarity, glitter, and defiance.’
— Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, Feminism, LGBT, Essays, Philosophy, Transgender

280 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 20, 2019

About the author

Paul B. Preciado has become one of the leading thinkers in the study of gender and sexuality. A professor of Political History of the Body, Gender Theory, and History of Performance at Paris VIII, he is also the author of Manifiesto contrasexual, which has become a queer theory classic, and Pornotopía: Architecture and Sexuality in Playboy During the Cold War, which has been named a finalist for the Anagrama Essay Prize. He teaches political history of the body, gender theory and history of performance at Université Paris VIII and is the director of the Independent Studies Program of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelone.

Reviews

[PaulaPé · Rating 5 out of 5]

el libro de mi vida. igual somete cualquier asunto a un análisis de precisión quirúrgica con el bisturí tecnobiopolitico que te toca el corazón y las entrañas

[elio · Rating 5 out of 5]

i think this is going to be THE book i'm going to read again and again and again and again

[Fanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of the author's columns in one of Paris' daily newspapers, the emotional evocativeness of having written these during periods of gender transition echoes through every piece, even if all aren't a spot-on hit. Deeply personal and unapologetically queer on the memoir-like front but also highly global in terms of socio-political issues — including capitalism, migration, gender theory, oppression, and aggression — in the way it highlights the utterly realistic yet so unfortunately exclusionary society through a commendable voice almost perfectly justifying why this chronological essay assembly is titled as An Apartment On Uranus — the coldest planet in the solar system and often an inspiration for uranism: to define the third sex and the rights of those who love differently.

↣ on my tbr for reading in translation readathon ↢

[C. B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A hit-and-miss collection, but it's entertaining. The overall emphasis on intermediateness, subjective transition, and border-lingering of course chimes with me (though I have reservations, as it's short-sighted in some ways and somewhat self-aggrandising); I just would have liked to have come out of the book seeing the world differently, as this Uranian project is surely about challenging the reader. I fear I'm the proverbial choir (I would have loved this in my teens, if it had existed). That said, his ideas about race and migration are maybe a bit questionable. His romanticisation of Athens as a cultural crossroads that one can liken to gender and sexuality felt like something from a Lawrence Durrell book.

The essays are generally conversational, but refer regularly to complex philosophical ideas, so you're more likely to enjoy it if you have a vague knowledge of Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, etc. I found that this sometimes lightly obscured points which were quite simple in earnest (like the perfectly fine message of 'Intersexicide'). But I cried with laughter at his essay on Candy Crush, while his thoughts on the horrors of school in 'A School for Alan' moved me (though remarkable that non-institutionalised forms of education seem not to have occurred to him). Definitely worth the time.

[Rita Póvoas · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I was reviewing the importance of the topics discussed on this book or even how much I agree with the author, I wouldn't hesitate giving it a 5. However, as a book, it bored me sometimes and in the end I was wishing for it to be over. Like a lot of people say in their reviews, sometimes the author uses unnecessarily complicated language that makes important discussions too pseudo-intellectual. It was still a great surprise because I didn't know about Paul Preciado and I did fell in love with his brain.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found 'An Apartment on Uranus' while browsing Edinburgh Radical Book Fair, overwhelmed by choice and sternly telling myself You Can Only Pick Two. I had not heard of Paul B. Preciado's writing before, nor could I fully determine from the blurb whether the book was fiction, non-, or a mixture. However, a flick through looked extremely promising and I love the format of Fitzcarraldo Editions. (They are the perfect size for my hands and use particularly pleasant smelling ink.) The content turned out to be a collection of short articles published in France between 2013 and 2018 on a range of political and personal topics that orbit around queerness and critique of neoliberal capitalism. I found Preciado's writing style and the translation compelling and punchy. Although there are repeating themes, the short pieces never become repetitive and are filled with energy and verve. They served as a reminder of Greece's struggles with austerity, which I followed closely at the time. That feels like a long while ago, before the spectre of Grexit was succeeded by the self-inflicted idiocy of Brexit.

I was amused by this dissection of a popular mobile phone game:

Candy Crush is a discipline of the soul, an immaterial prison proposing a constant deferral of desire and action. The game is addressed to generic subjects stripped of their secondary social defences (which might explain why the largest number of players are what we socially call 'women'): the game establishes a closed circuit between the limbic brain (which manages emotional memory), the hand, and the screen. Candy Crush is not a training game that exercises the player's skill in order to improve it. It is a simple game of chance installed in one of our most accessible, intimate external techno-organs: the mobile phone. It's Las Vegas in the palm of your hand. The aim of Candy Crush is not to teach the users anything, but to capture the totality of their cognitive capacities during a given amount of time and appropriate their libidinal resources by making the screen into a surrogate masturbatory surface. In Candy Crush, the players never win anything: when they finish one level, it's the screen that has the orgasm.

That paragraph gives a fair idea of Preciado's wit and insight. Other pieces carry a lot of emotional power, notably 'The Bullet':

Homosexuality is a silent sniper who plants a bullet in children's hearts in school playgrounds, it aims without caring if they're the kids of yuppies, agnostics, or die-hard Catholics. Its hand doesn't tremble, neither in the schools of the sixth arrondissement nor in the working-class neighbourhoods. It shoots with the same precision in the streets of Chicago, the villages of Italy, or the suburbs of Johannesburg. Homosexuality is a sniper blind as love, bursting forth like laughter, gentle as a pet.
[...]
Transsexuality is a silent sniper who plants a bullet in the chests of children standing in front of a mirror or counting their steps on their way to school. It doesn't care if they were born from artificial insemination or Catholic coitus.
[...]
For those who have the courage to look straight at the wound, the bullet becomes the key to a world they had seen nothing of before. The curtains part, the 'matrix' breaks apart. But among those who carry the bullet in their chests, some decide to live as if they felt nothing. Others compensate for the weight of the bullet by acting like Don Juan or like a princess. Doctors and churches promise to extract the bullet. [...] But no-one has ever figured out how to get the bullet out. Neither Mormons nor Castrists. You can bury it more deeply in your chest, but you can never remove it. Your bullet is your guardian angel: it will always be by your side.

What an incredible extended metaphor. Preciado's essays also follow his experiments with taking testosterone and the long process of legally changing his name. I found his discussion of being trans really thought-provoking; the concepts of 'biopolitical refugee' and being exiled from gender are fascinating. I was also pleased to note connections to the previous book I'd read, The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, which talks of vitalism as anticolonial anticapitalist philosophy. Preciado terms it 'animalism' but his point is just the same:

Animalism reveals the colonial, patriarchal roots of those universal principles of European humanism. The system of slavery, and then of wage labour, appears as the foundation of the liberty of modern 'man'; the expropriation and segmentation of life and knowledge as the other side of equality; war, competition, and rivalry as the driving force of fraternity.

Other pieces I found especially memorable concerned schools ('the most brutal and manipulative of the factories of heterosexuality') and Marx's happiness ('a kind of anti-psychology of the ego for inhabitants in a world in the process of decomposition'). Preciado's articles are essentially highbrow hot takes, slightly greater in length than opinion columns in The Guardian. Yet they transcend the ephemeral nature of most such writing thanks to erudition, insight, vividness, and originality that make them well worth reading now that headlines have moved on.

[Modesto García · Rating 2 out of 5]

Entiendo el valor intelectual que hay detrás de este ensayo, y en general aplaudo las tesis que defiende, pero me ha parecido que el estilo es inaccesible e incluso un poco pretencioso. Creo que las frases están sobre-complejizadas y hacen que, como libro, sea dificil de consumir.

Quizás como artículos independientes, que es lo que eran antes de compilarse en este tomo, los textos tengan más sentido y sean más consumibles. Juntos se convierten en una experiencia densa y muy irregular, que trata temas demasiado diferentes. Creo que como proyecto literario, le falta foco.

[Morgan M. Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

The original Testo Junkie himself returns with this memoir-by-way-of-political-commentaries, a collection of several years of Preciado's column in Libération. Though some of the individual columns are hit or miss - and there is a recurrent problem with false equations and metaphors around race - Preciado's keen insights on gender and migration shine through. More importantly: we must celebrate the absolutely queer decision to have two competing/complimentary introductions, one by himself, and the other by his ex-girlfriend Virginie Despentes! When I read Preciado, it's for this level of politico-sexual drama! Preciado's commitment to the truly queer, rebelliously sexual, sex work, crip-queer, migrant, transsexual vanguard is commendable - particularly in a time when the young generation's views on sexuality are becoming increasingly conservative and censorious. Preciado is absolutely the intellectual version of a "This is my voice five minutes on T" video, and that is precisely why we love him. He elevates. So while this book is no Testo Junkie, it can perhaps push us all to remember that we, too, need to elevate our politics, our fucking, our intellects.

[sophiereads · Rating 5 out of 5]

„Weil ich Sie mag, wünsche ich Ihnen, schwach zu sein und verachtet zu werden. Denn die Revolution beginnt mit der Zerbrechlichkeit.“

[bianqui *‧.₊˚*੭*ˊᵕˋ੭.* · Rating 5 out of 5]

edit diciembre 2020:

me di cuenta de que vuelvo muchísimo a este libro, a pensarlo o a buscar alguna referencia para la facultad. es de esos libros que se te quedan dando vueltas en la cabeza. por eso le subo el rating de 4 a 5 estrellas.


reseña julio 2020:

leí varias reseñas de gente diciendo que la forma de escribir de preciado es compleja y pretenciosa. eso me lleva a sacar dos posibles conclusiones: o 1) estas personas leyeron pocos textos teóricos en su vida (cosa que no es para nada algo malo, simplemente un hecho) o 2) sus comentarios esconden un odio inherente hacia la disidencia. porque la realidad es que no hay nada pretencioso en la escritura del autor; de hecho, es de los autores más claros para leer dentro de la teoría queer (que, recordemos, se toma de posestructuralistas como foucalt, derrida, deleuze, todos autores bastante más complejos y enrredados). que sus oraciones sean largas no lo hace complejo, el único grado de complejidad que puede haber son ciertos conceptos previos a este libro que, de no haber leído a preciado o a butler (por ejemplo) con anterioridad, son fácilmente sustituíbles por google. me lleva a pensar que quizás a algunas personas no les agrada que cuerpos externos a la norma teoricen sus vivencias.

dicho esto, el libro me pareció muy bueno y necesario. es una recopilación de varios ensayos escritos a lo largo de la vida de preciado. hay ensayos teóricos y otros más narrativos, aunque yo me animo a asegurar que casi toda la obra de preciado tiene un gesto narrativo. al ser ensayos cortos (la mayoría no se extiende más de cuatro páginas), la lectura es bastante rápida y llevadera, a pesar de la cantidad de información que proporciona. por supuesto, algunos textos son mejores que otros. por supuesto, algunos me interesaron más que otros. así es la vida. pero lo recomiendo mucho, aún si no estás de acuerdo con todo lo que plantea, porque es una linda invitación a repensar cosas que damos por hecho en todos los aspectos de la vida.

preciado es un experto en cuestionar y deconstruir absolutamente todo. si bien es algo que yo me veo incapaz de hacer en la cotidianidad, aún así disfruté mucho esta lectura. siempre me llevo datos interesantes y nuevos aprendizajes al leer al autor, y por eso estoy muy agradecida.

[Francisco Ferreira · Rating 5 out of 5]

To Marta,

I’ve messaged Paul, right after reading two or three entries of this ‘diary’. I was taking the bus to a liminal space while realising that, the body is the ultimate liminal place for the subjects in our minds. I cried hard that morning, I was disturbed by his words. Not that they were somehow grotesque - they were, but I always had an affinity with the gruesome - but the brilliance of the sentence, the tonality, and the exhibition of ideas was divine. And divinity -that, yes- was what wounded my core. To take upon your concept of an idea being the wound in the brain - or in the cognitive sphere, if we don’t want to mechanize thought - then this book dilacerated my body. There’s post-human sex and the demolition of the epistemology of the sex-gender boundary. There’s alliteration and repetition as you so much like that makes some entries sound more like profane hymns. There’s shame, guilt, and the relationship with The Mother (the hegemonic giver of life) and The Father (the hegemonic giver of death) but also there’s mum and dad. There’s police and there’s Franco, there’s queerness everywhere oozing out of the heteronormative rotting, virulent, macho body. And lastly, there’s the letter. I strongly advise you to read it out loud, the voice has no body and is thus suitable for the journey Paul sends you through.

I remember kissing you on the porch of our house,
Love
Fran

[Jowix · Rating 5 out of 5]

Przepiękny zbiór esejów zrodzonych z marzenia o lepszym świecie, świecie wolnym od wszelkich patriarchalnych, kapitalistycznych, heteronormatywnych opresji. Paul B. Preciado ujmuje kondycję człowieka jako nieustanne uchodzenie - ze swojej płci, z seksualności, z rodziny, z kraju do kraju, z bio- i nekropolitycznego przeznaczenia. Nadaje zmianom język i kierunki, precyzyjnie wadzi się z rzeczywistością, zaprasza do podróży na Uran, podróży, która nigdy się nie kończy.
(Książkę po polsku wyda na jesień Karakter, a w Nowym Teatrze w Warszawie jest wspaniały spektakl-adaptacja Borczucha, polecam!)

[Federico Sosa Machó · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesantísimos artículos a través de los cuales se asoma la originalidad del pensamiento de Preciado en su cuestionamiento a distintos pilares de la modernidad. A partir de su compleja experiencia vital, el autor arremete especialmente contra el paradigma binario y la naturalización de determinadas visiones sobre la sexualidad. También encuentran lugar referencias a las crisis económicas que acechan desde hace unos años a diversos países o reflexiones acerca de la ecología. No necesariamente es fácil coincidir en todo, pero para pensar y sacudir prejuicios, un autor ideal.

[Valentina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Del Procés a la crisis griega, pasando por Burgos, estas columnas de Paul B. Preciado son una crónica lúcida de su transición y los cambios políticos de las ciudades que visita, en las que vive y ha vivido, escribiendo siempre desde fronteras sociales.
Epistemología binaria, gestión biopolítica de los cuerpos, heterosexualidad necropolítica, política ficción... me quiero aprender estos textos de memoria 💜

[Angélica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es verdad que estamos en una crisis epistemológica. Y que continúe y se rompan los parámetros tan obsoletos que tenemos. No es fácil porque dejar de pensar y sentir lo que se cree que es natural desde el cuerpo, hasta la forma de escribir y hablar es una tarea extenuante y dura. Un ejercicio de repensar a una misma y lo que nos rodea.

[heptagrammaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bodies and spaces; the earth beneath feet, the sky above. Home, performance, the museum. (Amuse the muses.) State violence at the crossroads. Bodies as technologies. Forgetting the code. Remember, thou too art an animal.

[Javi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Realmente no lo he terminado entero, solo determinados artículos seleccionados. No se bien como valorar este libro, la verdad. No lo recomendaría porque me ha parecido aburrido, pretencioso y porque no he entendido la mitad de lo que he leído, pero precisamente por no entender la mitad no puedo definir si es una maravilla o una mierda.

[Floflyy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Certes, j'ai pas tout compris. Certes, l'auteur complique parfois des sujets par son érudition et l'abus d'un langage techno-scientifique. Oui, parfois je me suis ennuyée et je ne voyais pas où l'auteur voulait en venir.

Pourtant il y a dans cette compilation de textes tous les sujets pour lesquels il faut se battre, tous les sujets de révolutions. C'est un livre qui donne envie de faire. Faire de notre corps un instrument de révolte. Faire de nos mains. Faire de nos vies.

[anna cabrespina · Rating 3 out of 5]

s’ha gaudit llegint-lo, alguns capítols més interessants que d’altres, a vegades se’m feia una mica repetitiu però. això sí, em va agafar super desprevinguda tota la crònica de l’u d’octubre i política catalana -

[misael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dirão que o importante é traduzir a força das praças nas urnas. Mas a revolução não tem nenhuma finalidade fora do próprio processo de transformação que propicia. Trata-se, como aponta Franco Berardi, mais conhecido como Bifo, de erotizar a vida quotidiana, deslocando o desejo que foi capturado pelo capital, pela nação ou pela guerra, para voltar a distribuí-lo no tempo e no espaço, para tudo e para todos. Eles dirão que não é possível. Mas vocês, mas nós já estamos aqui.

[paulinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pra ser sincera, fiquei em dúvida entre 3,5 estrelas e 4 estrelas, porque tem muitas coisas bem boas no livro, algumas crônicas que me pegaram bastante, mas outras que eu não sei se não entendi, não concordei, ou não dialogaram muito comigo (porque muitas se tratam de problemas da Europa e da década passada). Mas achei uma forma interessante de conhecer mais do Preciado e do que ele pensa além da teoria mesmo! Li em espanhol!!!

[Mauricio Martínez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un apartamento en Urano es un conjunto de mini ensayos, en un cierto cuasi orden cronológico, escritos por el autor Paul Beatriz Preciado, durante su proceso de transición. Ensayos políticos, ensayos sobre género y sexualidad, sobre la caída de la democracia en Europa, sobre nuestra dependencia con este sistema opresor. Algunos ensayos más ágiles de leer, otros no tanto. Pero siempre con una visión muy particular del mundo, en la que no agrada encasillarse.
Paul no vive en un lugar en particular, se desplaza, se mueve por el mundo sin parar, lo cual claramente influencia su forma de ver las políticas de inmigración, y de control estatal. Pero también muestra su desdén por las naciones. Un constante movimiento que también se nota en su visión de la sexualidad, no le gustan las etiquetas, prefiere la fluidez, que no existan limitaciones, y esa forma de ver el mundo está en constante contacto con sus análisis.
De a momentos se me hace tedioso leerlo, de a momentos lo amo por como ve el mundo.
Es una lectura difícil de recomendar, pero creo que si te interesa una visión del mundo de alguien con una realidad tan particular como la de Paul, vale la pena leerlo, incluso en sus momentos más densos, es una visión honesta del mundo, de donde puedo decir que muchas cosas me hacen sentirme identificado, y en otras, quizás ayuda a hacerme ver el mundo desde una perspectiva muy ajena a mi.

[La Central · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Podríamos decir que esta obra es una recopilación de crónicas si entendemos por éstas un discurso que engarza vivencia y análisis crítico del presente, que recorre el tiempo y el espacio a través de un cuerpo, el de Preciado, que habita un apartamento en Urano. Pero no es el primer uranista. Ya en 1864, Karl Heinrich Ullrichs utilizó este término para nombrar un tercer sexo y desde entonces no han sido pocas las personas que, expulsadas por una normatividad que las excluye como sujetos legítimos, han habitado Urano.

Mediante un lenguaje híbrido que fusiona su propia experiencia con sus tesis filosóficas, Preciado va tejiendo su infancia como niña lesbiana en una familia católica con el análisis de la heterosexualidad como institución, sus chutes de testosterona con su examen de la sociedad farmacopornográfica, su cambio con las micropolíticas del cruce, en una propuesta que tiene que ver con su concepción misma de lo político.

En suma, estos textos son una incitación a la resistencia, y a través de ellos Preciado nos confronta con las certezas que nos impiden hacernos cargo de esas heridas que todas albergamos en nuestra subjetividad, y que son heridas públicas, colectivas, y al mismo tiempo irreductiblemente encarnadas en nuestros cuerpos. Porque el cruce, lo sepamos o no, es el único sitio que existe." Clara Fernández de Lis

[Kapuss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cuando veo avanzar a las familias en las manifestaciones neoconservadoras con sus hijos, no puedo evitar pensar que entre esos niños hay algunos de tres, cinco, quién sabe, apenas ocho años, que llevan ya una bala ardiendo en el pecho. Sostienen banderas que dicen “los niños tienen pene, las niñas tienen vulva, que no te engañen”, que alguien les ha puesto entre las manos. Pero ellos saben ya que no podrán estar a la altura del estereotipo. Sus padres gritan para que las niñas lesbianas, para que los niños maricas y los niñes trans no vayan al colegio, pero ellos saben que llevan la bala dentro. Por la noche, como cuando yo era un niño, se van a la cama con la vergüenza de decepcionar a sus padres, con miedo quizás de que sus padres les abandonen o deseen su muerte. Y sueñan, como yo cuando era un niño, que huyen hacia un lugar extranjero, o a un planeta lejano, donde los niños de la bala pueden vivir. Yo os hablo a vosotros, los niños de la bala, y os digo: la vida es maravillosa, os esperamos aquí, todos los caídos, los amantes del pecho agujereado. No estáis solos.

[Cozy Reading Times · Rating 5 out of 5]

Readin An Apartment on Uranus is sometimes confusing but also often enlightening and fiery. At the least, it's always interesting.

Paul B. Preciado writes with much personality and a distinct sense of justice. This book is a political manifesto that is both postcolonial and queer. His voice is incredibly compelling and sarcastically witty, even when discussing severe traumas or atrocities.

Most of all, his essays are inspiring. By discussing not only the struggles of the world today but also the people who fight for a better one, he has infested me with persistent hope. Learning about the teenage street rebels of Athens, the Silent University, or the Catalonian people demanding independence... To see so many humans having dreams like me of a better future for all of us, coming together in solidarity and spirit makes me want to fight as well. Let's change this this world for the better.

Also, this is the book that made me realise that nonfiction can be fun. So, I'm now planning to read more of it.

[Omar Abu samra · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting work to read

[snyoprzeszlosci · Rating 4 out of 5]

To świetna książka i autor sporo spraw mi rozjaśnił. Być może — podobnie do autora — zacznę określać się "dysydentką płci".

Bywały tu lepsze i gorsze momenty — Preciado tworzy dużo nowych słów, które odnoszone do polityki są początkowo trudne do zrozumienia, jak np. umieszczanie przed słowami przedrostka "nekro-" — jednak jest to zbiór esejów o szerokiej, głębokiej treści. Zmiany sugerowane przez autora są ogromne, przewracające współczesne rozumienie rzeczywistości do góry nogami, nawet jeśli przez to wydają się niemożliwe do zrealizowania. Myślę, że to tekst do którego będę wracać wielokrotnie (nawet jeśli muszę popracować nad ponownym sięganiem do przeczytanych książek).

Dużą wadą jednak okazał się dla mnie brak źródeł dotyczących danych lub wydarzeń historycznych przytaczanych przez autora. Także z początku z trudem przychodziło mi czytanie tak krótkich rozdziałów, choć wiem, z czego to wynika.

[Ainara Onzain Sarrias · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cròniques sobre la vida i sobre el context sociopolític de 2011-2017 des dels ulls del Paul B. Preciado. QUÈ BÉ QUE M'HO HE PASSAT I QUANT QUE HE APRÈS 😭😭😭
Moltes gràcies un altre cop

[Ana M D Oliveira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fazia muito tempo que eu não destacava tantos trechos em um só livro.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

In mythology Uranus was a titan who came out of earth and was castrated. In astronomy it’s the coldest and the furthest planet on the solar system. Both of these facts are the basis for Paul B. Preciado’s Apartment on Uranus, a collection of his monthly column for Paris newspaper Libération. For the former, Uranians was a term used to describe people who were of the third sex and the latter deals with Paul B. Preciado’s life.

When Paul B. was writing the column he was transitioning and this forms a basis for the majority of the articles. Thus we read about the use of hormones, the change of name and other factors involved in Paul B’s transition.

These articles do go deeper one example is that Paul B’s the casting away of his female form to Catalonia’s separation from Spain. Along with his changing form we get descriptions of different cities he visits, thus not only is his body in a state of transition but all aspects of his life are.

Other topics range from politics, gender (or rejection of ) , sex, AIDS and stray dogs, just to name a few but his transition is the basis and all topics are cleverly infused. If one thinks that these writings are serious, do think again, Preciado is not shy of using puns (brought out excellently by translator Charlotte Mandell) so I did smile.

One reason why I read books written by trans and non binary authors is so that I learn. One gets a deeper insight of what goes on in a trans man’s mind, how people react, even the bureaucratic system involved when changing one’s name. It’s fascinating. Although I read novels about attitudes, this is the first time I’ve read about the actual process and how one may feel. An Apartment on Uranus is an enlightening read and a must for someone who wants to gather some knowledge on the transitioning process.