The Living Realm

‘Belongs in the firmament of great gay fiction’ DOUGLAS STUART

‘A beautiful novel’ SEÁN HEWITT

‘I tore through it’ JOSH SILVER

The stunning new novel from the 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.

‘A novel that rises to its subject: the whole of life’ GARTH GREENWELL, author of Small Rain

‘Full of love and wonder … transforms farewell into summer without end’ JEREMY ATHERTON LIN, author of Deep House

‘Mesmerising …I couldn’t put it down’ WILLIAM RAYFET HUNTER, author of Sunstruck

‘Tannahill captures so much in a slim, hypnotic novel’ TASH AW, author of The South

‘Remarkable … I finished in floods of cleansing tears’ JACK PARLETT, author of Flamboyance

‘An expertly crafted ghost story overflowing with life’ SAMANTHA JOSEPHS, author of Carrying

‘A deeply tender and mystical meditation on desire and aging … left me breathless’ HUW LEMMEY, co-author of Bad Gays: A Homosexual History

‘Feels destined to become a classic of queer literature’ TOBI COVENTRY, author of He’s the Devil

© 2026 Fourth Estate (Lydbog): 9780008794576

Udgivelsesdato

Lydbog: 24. september 2026