June 27 is Global Pride Day, a day that brings together the LGBTQIAP+ community around the world to celebrate diversity & equality.
And there’s no better way to explore that diversity than with some great books so we’ve gathered together 18 outstanding global reads that traverse the LGBTQIAP+ spectrum. Some written by authors who live in countries where being gay is punishable by jail time & people are often maimed just for being themselves.
If the LGBTQIAP+ acronym is new to you, it stands for:
Lesbian
Gay
Bisexual
Transgender
Queer
Intersex
Asexual
Pansexual
+ (Meaning “not limited to”)
We hope you find a read below that interests you, speaks to you, or helps you to see through new eyes. (And if you’re looking for a fun celebration, Global Pride 2020 is streaming 24 hours of content that “reflects & celebrates the beautiful diversity of LGBTQIAP+ people around the world with musical & artistic performances, speeches from activists & campaigners, & addresses by public figures.”)
From Argentina
Winner of the International Booker Prize 2020
Best books published in Latin America 2017 ―New York Times
Best books dealing with feminism, sisterhood and queerness ―Pagina/12
“‘I took off my dress and the petticoats and I put on the Englishman’s breeches and shirt. I put on his neckerchief and asked Liz to take the scissors and cut my hair short. My plait fell to the ground and there I was, a young lad. Good boy she said to me, then pulled my face towards her and kissed me on the mouth. It surprised me, I didn’t understand, I didn’t know you could do that and it was revealed to me so naturally: why wouldn’t you be able to do that? Liz’s imperious tongue entered my mouth, her spicy, flowery saliva tasted like curry and tea and lavender water.’
1872. The pampas of Argentina. China is a young woman eking out an existence in a remote gaucho encampment. After her no-good husband is conscripted into the army, China bolts for freedom, setting off on a wagon journey through the pampas in the company of her new-found friend Liz, a settler from Scotland. While Liz provides China with a sentimental education and schools her in the nefarious ways of the British Empire, their eyes are opened to the wonders of Argentina’s richly diverse flora and fauna, cultures and languages, as well as to the ruthless violence involved in nation-building.
This subversive retelling of Argentina’s foundational gaucho epic Martín Fierro is a celebration of the colour and movement of the living world, the open road, love and sex, and the dream of lasting freedom. With humour and sophistication, Cámara has created a joyful, hallucinatory novel that is also an incisive critique of national myths.”
From Canada
Arseneault is an asexual & aromantic-spectrum writer who writes sci fi & fantasy led by aromantic & asexual heroes. She also maintains a database of aro & ace characters & books from a large variety of writers. City of Strife includes an asexual aromantic character & a graysexual character. If these terms are new to you: An asexual (aka “ace”) is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. An aromantic (aka “aro”) is a person who experiences little or no romantic attraction to others. A graysexual is someone who experiences limited sexual attraction (i.e., they experience sexual attraction very rarely or with very low intensity).
“A hundred and thirty years have passed since Arathiel last set foot in his home city. Isandor hasn’t changed—bickering merchant families still vie for power through eccentric shows of wealth—but he has. His family is long dead, a magical trap has dulled his senses, and he returns seeking a sense of belonging now long lost.
Arathiel hides in the Lower City, piecing together a new life among in a shelter dedicated to the homeless and the poor, befriending an uncommon trio: the Shelter’s rageful owner, Larryn, his dark elven friend Hasryan, and Cal the cheese-loving halfling. When Hasryan is accused of Isandor's most infamous assassination of the last decade, what little peace Arathiel has managed to find for himself is shattered. Hasryan is innocent… he thinks. In order to save him, Arathiel may have to shatter the shreds of home he’d managed to build for himself.
Arathiel could appeal to the Dathirii—a noble elven family who knew him before he disappeared—but he would have to stop hiding, and they have battles of their own to fight. The idealistic Lord Dathirii is waging a battle of honour and justice against the cruel Myrian Empire, objecting to their slavery, their magics, and inhumane treatment of their apprentices. One he could win, if only he could convince Isandor’s rulers to stop courting Myrian’s favours for profit.
In the ripples that follow Diel’s opposition, friendships shatter and alliances crumble. Arathiel, the Dathirii, and everyone in Isandor fights to preserve their homes, even if the struggle changes them irrevocably.
City of Strife is the first installment of the City of Spires trilogy, a multi-layered political fantasy led by an all LGBTQIAP+ cast. Fans of complex storylines criss-crossing one another, elves and magic, and strong friendships and found families will find everything they need within these pages.”
From Morocco
Written by an author often cited as the “first openly gay novelist from Morocco,” where same-sex sexual activity has been illegal since 1962. Infidels tells the story of a ten-year-old boy, the son of a prostitute, who grows up to become a young gay Muslim, and then a jihadi.
”Set in Salé, Morocco—the hometown Abdellah Taïa fled but to which he returns again and again in his acclaimed fiction and films—Infidels follows the life of Jallal, the son of a prostitute witch doctor—’a woman who knew men, humanity, better than anyone. In sex. Beyond sex.’ As a ten-year-old sidekick to his mother, Jallal spits in the face of her enemies both real and imagined.
The cast of characters that rush into their lives are unforgettable for their dreams of love and belonging that unravel in turn. Built as a series of monologues that are emotionally relentless—a mix of confession, heart's murmuring, and shouting match—the book follows Jallal out of boyhood on the path to Jihad. It's a path that surprises even him.”
From Denmark
“What if your first true love broke all known taboos? What if your very first romance drowned you in a whirlpool of transgression? A coming-of-age novel that is minutely in tune with the perversions of its narrator’s body, The Skin Is the Elastic Covering that Encases the Entire Body defines category. The desperate account of a teenage boy in love with a much older riding instructor, it follows the unforgettable Bjorn as he pushes his flesh to its very limits, annihilating boundaries of gender and sexuality in a search for impossible gratification.
A feverish combination of stream of conscious, autobiography, collage, and narrative, Skin marks the arrival of a truly original literary voice. It is as omnivorous as the bodies within it, as unrestrained as the appetites, terrors, and trystings that celebrated author Bjorn Rasumssen evokes in poetic detail. Deeply emotional, erotic, elegiac, and pansexual, it caresses the wounds we visit upon our flesh and soul in an attempt to serve the urges of the body’s largest organ—the skin that covers and defines us.”
from Peru
“No other writer in the Spanish-speaking world is as fiercely independent and thoroughly irreverent as Gabriela Wiener. Constantly testing the limits of genre and gender, Wiener’s work … has bravely unveiled truths some may prefer remain concealed about a range of topics, from the daily life of polymorphous desire to the tiring labor of maternity.
In fierce and sumptuous first-person accounts, renowned Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener records infiltrating the most dangerous Peruvian prison, participating in sexual exchanges in swingers clubs, traveling the dark paths of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris in the company of transvestites and prostitutes, undergoing a complicated process of egg donation, and participating in a ritual of ayahuasca ingestion in the Amazon jungle—all while taking us on inward journeys that explore immigration, maternity, fear of death, ugliness, and threesomes. Fortunately, our eagle-eyed voyeur emerges from her narrative forays unscathed and ready to take on the kinks, obsessions, and messiness of our lives. Sexographies is an eye-opening, kamikaze journey across the contours of the human body and mind.”
“The most striking quality of Sexographies is Gabriela Wiener’s fearlessness―her ability to broach any topic without the slightest flinch, however unfamiliar or achingly personal…. Wiener’s essays do not deal solely in sex, but in the exploration of identity and gender. How are we to make sense of our own bodies and the bodies of others? Why is it that we―with the internet at our fingertips―supposedly know more than ever, yet often experience less and are less open to the experiences of others? Wiener urges us to ask these questions in order to uncover the artificial boundaries that have confined us to our own experiences. Nothing is off limits and she spares her readers no detail of her adventures. The result is Sexographies―an addictive and darkly funny collection that surprises at every turn.” —The Arkansas International
From France
“Haunting . . . devastating.” - The San Francisco Chronicle
“Èdouard Louis speaks of violence, both social and familiar, with tremendous force and feeling. Revelatory, queerly tough, as intellectual as it is impolite, The End of Eddy is a book to shake you up.” - Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
“An autobiographical novel about growing up gay in a working-class town in Picardy.
‘Every morning in the bathroom I would repeat the same phrase to myself over and over again . . . Today I’m really gonna be a tough guy.’ Growing up in a poor village in northern France, all Eddy Bellegueule wanted was to be a man in the eyes of his family and neighbors. But from childhood, he was different—’girlish,’ intellectually precocious, and attracted to other men.
Already translated into twenty languages, The End of Eddy captures the violence and desperation of life in a French factory town. It is also a sensitive, universal portrait of boyhood and sexual awakening. Like Karl Ove Knausgaard or Edmund White, Édouard Louis writes from his own undisguised experience, but he writes with an openness and a compassionate intelligence that are all his own. The result—a critical and popular triumph—has made him the most celebrated French writer of his generation.”
from Equatorial Guinea
“Orphaned Okomo lives under the watchful eye of her grandmother and dreams of finding her father. Forbidden from seeking him out, she enlists the help of other village outcasts: her gay uncle, and a gang of ‘mysterious’ girls reveling in their so-called indecency. Drawn into their illicit trysts, Okomo finds herself falling for their leader and rebelling against the rigid norms of Fang culture. [Note: The Fang people also known as Fãn are a Central African ethnic group found in Equatorial Guinea, northern Gabon, & southern Cameroon.]”
“A breakthrough novel that tells the world, from an Equatorial Guinean perspective, that there is so much necessary life outside of, beyond, before, and after patriarchy. For those of us who have been told that we do not exist. That we cannot exist. That we should not exist. This groundbreaking story full of love and nurturing is a spell for remembering that we do exist, we have existed, and that we must support each other to exist and thrive as who we are.” —Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of M Archive: After the End of the World
“Though I live a world away from Equatorial Guinea, I saw so much of myself in Okomo: a tomboy itching to be free and to escape society’s rigged game. I cheered her on with every page, and wished—for myself and all girls—for the bravery to create our own world.” —Maggie Thrash, author of Honor Girl
From China
“The book sings. It is a small masterpiece. . . [No one] has written more honestly and poignantly than Min about the desert of solitude and human alienation at the center of the Chinese Communist revolution.” - Vogue
”Gripping. . . .reads like raw testimony. . .epic drama, and. . .poetic incantation. . . . It was passion and despair that made [Min] fearless; it was fearlessness that made her a writer.” - The NY Times
“A revelatory and disturbing portrait of China, this is Anchee Min’s celebrated memoir of growing up in the last years of Mao’s China. As a child, Min was asked to publicly humiliate a teacher; at seventeen, she was sent to work at a labor collective. Forbidden to speak, dress, read, write, or love as she pleased, she found a lifeline in a secret love affair with another woman. Miraculously selected for the film version of one of Madame Mao’s political operas, Min’s life changed overnight. Then Chairman Mao suddenly died, taking with him an entire world. This national bestseller and New York Times Notable Book is exceptional for its candor, its poignancy, its courage, and for its prose which Newsweek calls ‘as delicate and evocative as a traditional Chinese brush painting.”
From the Netherlands
“This courageous early work of lesbian fiction (1951) tells the gripping story of two women torn between desires and taboos in the years leading up to the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam.
When Bea meets Erica at the home of a mutual friend, this chance encounter sets the stage for the story of two women torn between desire and taboo.
Erica, a reckless young journalist, pursues passionate but abusive affairs with different women. Bea, a reserved secretary, grows increasingly obsessed with Erica, yet denial and shame keep her from recognizing her attraction. Only Bea’s discovery that Erica is half-Jewish and a member of the Dutch resistance—and thus in danger—brings her closer to accepting her own feelings.
First published in 1954 in the Netherlands, Dola de Jong’s The Tree and the Vine was a groundbreaking work in its time for its frank and sensitive depiction of the love between two women, now available in a new translation.”
“A jewel hidden in plain sight.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
“This compelling novel allows us entry into a world in which the word lesbian is unspeakable and to be a Jew is unspeakably dangerous.” —Evelyn Torton Beck, editor of Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology
From Brazil
Winner of the 2017 Best Translated Book Award
Longlisted for the 2017 National Translation Award
“The novel’s edgy and frank depictions of gender fluidity and sexual orientation begs comparisons to Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer while its themes of a great family in decay recalls the best work of William Faulkner.” —World Literature Today
“Long considered one of the most important works of twentieth-century Brazilian literature, Chronicle of the Murdered House finally became available in English in 2017.
Set in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, the novel relates the dissolution of a once proud patriarchal family that blames its ruin on the marriage of its youngest son, Valdo, to Nina—a vibrant, unpredictable, and incendiary young woman whose very existence seems to depend on the destruction of the household.
This family's downfall, peppered by stories of decadence, adultery, incest, and madness, is related through a variety of narrative devices, including letters, diaries, memoirs, statements, confessions, and accounts penned by the various characters.”
From France
One of Flavorwire’s “22 Essential Women Writers to Read in Translation”
Winner of the 2018 Albertine Prize
Finalist for the 2018 Lamba Literary Awards
Finalist for the 2018 French American Foundation Translation Prize
Not One Day won the Prix Médicis in 2002, recognizing Garréta as an author “whose fame does not yet match their talent.”
“Not One Day begins with a maxim: ‘Not one day without a woman.’ What follows is an intimate, erotic, and sometimes bitter recounting of loves and lovers past, breathtakingly written, exploring the interplay between memory, fantasy, and desire.
‘For life is too short to submit to reading poorly written books and sleeping with women one does not love.’”
“Although the book swerves briefly into the erotic, the majority of the text is a heady meditation. Where we expect to find a confession of the body, we are in fact met with a confession of the mind, as Garréta laments the imposition of hetero normative gender roles upon queer desire. This leaves the reader with another question: how can we invent alternate ways to express desire outside of hetero dichotomy?” —Lambda Literary
From Chile
“As Chile descends into chaos, two disparate souls begin ‘an odd-couple romance, in the tradition of Kiss of the Spider Woman or The Crying Game’ -Kirkus Reviews
It is the spring of 1986, and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is losing his grip on power. In one of Santiago’s many poor neighborhoods, a man known as the Queen of the Corner embroiders linens for the wealthy. A hopeless and lonely romantic, he listens to boleros to drown out the gunshots.
Then he meets Carlos, a young, handsome man who befriends the aging homosexual and uses his house to store mysterious boxes and hold clandestine meetings. And as the relationship between these two very different men blossoms, they find themselves caught in a revolution that could doom them both.
By turns funny and profoundly moving, Pedro Lemebel’s lyrical prose offers an intimate window into the mind of Pinochet himself as the world of Carlos and the Queen prepares to collide with the dictator’s own in ‘a wonderful snapshot of this period of Chile’s history . . . A touching tale of love and danger’.”
From the Netherlands
When his twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return to the small family farm. He resigns himself to taking over his brother's role and spending the rest of his days 'with his head under a cow'.
After his old, worn-out father has been transferred upstairs, Helmer sets about furnishing the rest of the house according to his own minimal preferences. 'A double bed and a duvet', advises Ada, who lives next door, with a sly look. Then Riet appears, the woman once engaged to marry his twin. Could Riet and her son live with him for a while, on the farm?
The Twin is an ode to the platteland, the flat and bleak Dutch countryside with its ditches and its cows and its endless grey skies.
Ostensibly a novel about the countryside, as seen through the eyes of a farmer, The Twin is, in the end, about the possibility or impossibility of taking life into one's own hands. It chronicles a way of life which has resisted modernity, is culturally apart, and yet riven with a kind of romantic longing.”
“Stealthy, seductive story-telling that draws you into a world of silent rage and quite unexpected relationships. Compelling and convincing from beginning to end.“ - Tim Parks
“Sombre, yet uplifiting…a novel of magnificent artistry that seems like simplicity…a tale of suppressed sexual orientation, but so delicately done.” - Michiel Heyns
From Turkey
“The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency meets Pedro Almodovar in this outrageous new series featuring an ultraglamorous sleuth
Bestsellers in Mehmet Murat Somer's home country of Turkey and set to take the world by storm, the arrival of the Hop-Çiki-Yaya (aka Turkish Delight) mysteries is cause for excitement (and lip gloss!) here in the United States.
A male computer technician by day and a cross-dressing hostess of Istanbul's most notorious nightclub by night, the unnamed heroine of The Kiss Murder is the most charming and hilarious sleuth to debut in recent memory. When Buse, one of the ‘girls’ at her club fears someone is after private letters from a former lover, she comes to her boss for help. The next day, Buse is dead and our girl must find the murderers before they find her. Fortunately, she is well armed with beauty, wit, the wardrobe of Audrey Hepburn, and expert Thai kickboxing skills.”
Featuring an irreverent & saucy drag queen, this highly entertaining & occasionally over-the-top story is the perfect read if you’re looking for something light, fun, and a little different as Charlaine Harris, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, & the Guardian all rave. (Also, it’s interesting to read about a feisty gay sub-culture in a traditionally conservative Muslim country.)
From France
“A #1 bestseller in France and translated into over twenty-five languages, Billie is one of the most beloved French novels to be published in recent years.
A brilliant evocation of contemporary Paris and a moving tale of friendship, Gavalda’s new novel tells the story of two young people, Billie and Franck, who, as the story opens, are trapped in a gorge in the Cévennes Mountains. Billie was a beaten-down girl from an impoverished family; Franck was secretly gay and weighed down by a judgmental father with high expectations. Theirs is a story of unconditional love and a deep, platonic friendship, which unfolds in a series of flashbacks as Billie begins to tell stories from their lives in order to calm them as darkness encroaches. In alternating episodes, the novel moves between recollections of the characters’ childhoods and their dire predicament.
Franck’s life has been impacted by a childhood spent with a perennially unemployed father who toyed with Christian extremism and a mother anesthetized by antidepressants. A bright kid, Franck’s future was menaced at every turn by the bigotry surrounding him. As for Billie, her abiding wish as an adult is to avoid ever having to come into contact with her family again. To escape from her abusive and alcohol-addled family, she was willing to do anything and everything. The wounds have not entirely healed.
At the heart of Gavalda’s moving story lies a generosity of spirit that will take readers’ breath away, and an unshakeable belief in the power of art to lift the most fragile among us to new vistas from which they can see futures full of hope, love, and dignity. Billie is a beautifully crafted novel for readers of all ages and from all walks of life that conveys a positive message about overcoming life’s trials and tribulations.”
“Billie is a revelation! It's Gavalda's finest novel yet.” —France 2
“The work is a testament to Gavalda's fine storytelling skills, which remain true even in the books' translation into English.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
From Jamaica
“At an opulent resort in Montego Bay, Margot hustles to send her younger sister, Thandi, to school. Taught as a girl to trade her sexuality for survival, Margot is ruthlessly determined to shield Thandi from the same fate. When plans for a new hotel threaten their village, Margot sees not only an opportunity for her own financial independence but also perhaps a chance to admit a shocking secret: her forbidden love for another woman. As they face the impending destruction of their community, each woman—fighting to balance the burdens she shoulders with the freedom she craves—must confront long-hidden scars.
From a much-heralded new writer, Here Comes the Sun offers a dramatic glimpse into a vibrant, passionate world most outsiders see simply as paradise.”
“For readers of Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, China Miéville, and David Mitchell comes a striking debut novel by a storyteller of keen insight and captivating imagination.
Named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post & a Lambda Literary Award winner.
On a cool evening in Kolkata, India, beneath a full moon, as the whirling rhythms of traveling musicians fill the night, college professor Alok encounters a mysterious stranger with a bizarre confession and an extraordinary story. Tantalized by the man’s unfinished tale, Alok will do anything to hear its completion so he agrees to transcribe a collection of battered notebooks, weathered parchments, and once-living skins.
From these documents, spills the chronicle of a race of people more than human, ruled by instincts and desires ages-old. The tale features a rough wanderer in 17th century India who finds himself irrevocably drawn to a defiant woman—and destined to be torn asunder by two clashing worlds. With every chapter of beauty and brutality, Alok’s interest in the stranger grows and evolves into something darker and more urgent.
Shifting dreamlike between present and past with intoxicating language, visceral action, compelling characters, and stark emotion, The Devourers offers a reading experience quite unlike any other novel.”
“[An] extraordinary piece of meta-fiction: stories within stories . . . trans-genre, transgender and transgressive . . . Who gets what he or she wants and, above all, who has the moral right to their desires, is the heart of this remarkable, multi-layered novel.” —Maclean’s
From Australia
“Written by a double Hugo award-winning author, Musketeer Space is a gender-flipped, space opera retelling of Alexandre Dumas' classic novel The Three Musketeers.” It’s “smart, funny, fast-paced and absorbing ” with outstanding 4.5 star & above reviews on all platforms including Goodreads & Amazon.
“‘I haven't got a blade. I haven't got a ship. I washed out of the Musketeers. If this is your idea of honour, put down the swords and I'll take you on with my bare hands.’
When Dana D'Artagnan left home for a life of adventure, she never expected to form a friendship with Paris Satellite's most infamous sword-fighting scoundrels: the Musketeers known as Athos, Porthos and Aramis.
Dana and her friends are swept up in a political conspiracy involving royal scandals, disguised spaceships, a handsome tailor who keeps getting himself kidnapped, and a seductive spy with too many secrets.
With the Solar System on the brink of war, Dana finally has a chance to prove herself. But is it worth becoming a Musketeer if she has to sacrifice her friends?
Swords! Kissing! Friendship! Spies! Spaceships! All for one and one for all.”
“A fantastic retelling of The Three Musketeers, but better than the original. Musketeer Space was wonderful with gender bent, LGBT characters, mysterious bad guys, love, pastries, mystery, thrills, twisted humour, and space ships—what’s not to love?” - BRNZ
Like these suggestions? You’re also welcome to join our online book club which reads books from around the world.