What Belongs to You
Synopsis
Startlingly erotic and immensely powerful, Garth Greenwell's What Belongs to You tells an unforgettable story about the ways our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love.
Winner of the Debut of the Year Award at the British Book Awards.
Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize.
'A searching and compassionate meditation on the slipperiness of desire . . . as beautiful and vivid as poetry' – Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life
On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia's National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, their relationship growing increasingly intimate and unnerving.
As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he's forced to grapple with his own fraught history: his formative experiences of love, his painful rejection by family and friends, and the difficulty of growing up as a gay man in southern America in the 1990s.
'Worthy of its comparisons to James Baldwin and Alan Hollinghurst as well as Virginia Woolf and W G Sebald . . . spellbinding' – Evening Standard
Longlisted for the National Book Award in Fiction.
A Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
A Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction.
Details
Reviews
“With What Belongs to You American literature is richer by one masterpiece. The character Mitko is unforgettable, as all myths are. He reigns at the heart of this book, surrounded by the magic flames of desire”Edmund White, author of A Boy's Own Story
“In his spare, haunting novel, Garth Greenwell takes a well-known narrative and finds new meaning in it. What Belongs to You is a searching and compassionate meditation on the slipperiness of desire, the impossibility of salvation, and the forces of shame, guilt, and yearning that often accompany love, rendered in language as beautiful and vivid as poetry”Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life
“There's a particular joy in reading Garth Greenwell, in having that feeling, precious and rare: here is the real thing”Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs
“What Belongs to You is a rich and sensually detailed exploration of love and obsession. A haunting, beautiful novel”Rabih Alameddine, author of An Unnecessary Woman
