In the highly anticipated follow-up to his beloved debut, What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell deepens his exploration of foreignness, obligation, and desire
Sofia, Bulgaria, a landlocked city in southern Europe, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. Soviet buildings crumble, wind scatters sand from the far south, and political protesters flood the streets with song.
In this atmosphere of disquiet, an American teacher navigates a life transformed by the discovery and loss of love. As he prepares to leave the place he’s come to call home, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad, each bearing uncanny reminders of his past. A queer student’s confession recalls his own first love, a stranger’s seduction devolves into paternal sadism, and a romance with another foreigner opens, and heals, old wounds. Each echo reveals startling insights about what it means to seek connection: with those we love, with the places we inhabit, and with our own fugitive selves.
Cleanness revisits and expands the world of Garth Greenwell’s beloved debut, What Belongs to You, declared “an instant classic” by The New York Times Book Review. In exacting, elegant prose, he transcribes the strange dialects of desire, cementing his stature as one of our most vital living writers.

Cleanness

Literature & Fiction

Greenwell, Garth

United States

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

A medical crisis brings one man close to death--and to love, art, and beauty--in a profound and luminous novel by award-winning author Garth Greenwell. A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind. This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value--art, memory, poetry, music, care--are thrown into sharp relief. Time expands and contracts. Sudden intimacies bloom. Small Rain surges beyond the hospital to encompass a radiant vision of human life: our shared vulnerability, the limits and possibilities of sympathy, the ideal of art and the fragile dream of America. Above all, this is a love story of the most unexpected kind.

Small Rain: A Novel

Long-listed for the 2016 National Book Award in fiction
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, drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk, and finds himself ensnared in a relationship in which lust leads to mutual predation, and tenderness can transform into violence. As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he’s forced to grapple with his own fraught history, the world of his southern childhood where to be queer was to be a pariah. There are unnerving similarities between his past and the foreign country he finds himself in, a country whose geography and griefs he discovers as he learns more of Mitko’s own narrative, his private history of illness, exploitation, and want.
What Belongs to You is a stunning debut novel of desire and its consequences. With lyric intensity and startling eroticism, Garth Greenwell has created an indelible story about the ways in which our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love.

What Belongs to You: A Novel

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 • A Finalist for the James Taite Black Prize for Fiction • A Finalist the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize • A Finalist for the Green Carnation Prize • A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A Los Angeles Times Bestseller Named One of the Best Books of the Year by More Than Fifty Publications, Including: The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times (selected by Dwight Garner), GQ, The Washington Post, Esquire, NPR, Slate, Vulture, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian (London), The Telegraph (London), The Evening Standard (London), The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Miami Herald, The Millions, BuzzFeed, The New Republic (Best Debuts of the Year), Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly (One of the Ten Best Books of the Year) "Garth Greenwell's What Belongs to You appeared in early 2016, and is a short first novel by a young writer; still, it was not easily surpassed by anything that appeared later in the year....It is not just first novelists who will be envious of Greenwell's achievement."―James Wood, The New Yorker
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, drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk, and finds himself ensnared in a relationship in which lust leads to mutual predation, and tenderness can transform into violence. As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he’s forced to grapple with his own fraught history, the world of his southern childhood where to be queer was to be a pariah. There are unnerving similarities between his past and the foreign country he finds himself in, a country whose geography and griefs he discovers as he learns more of Mitko’s own narrative, his private history of illness, exploitation, and want. What Belongs to You is a stunning debut novel of desire and its consequences. With lyric intensity and startling eroticism, Garth Greenwell has created an indelible story about the ways in which our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love.

What Belongs To You

Picador Paper

Product Description 
Longlisted for the Prix Sade 2021Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates PrizeLonglisted for the Gordon Burn PrizeA New York Times Notable Book of 2020A New York Times Critics Top Ten Book of the YearNamed a Best Book of the Year by over 30 Publications, including The New Yorker, TIME, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, and the BBCIn the highly anticipated follow-up to his beloved debut, What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell deepens his exploration of foreignness, obligation, and desireSofia, Bulgaria, a landlocked city in southern Europe, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. Soviet buildings crumble, wind scatters sand from the far south, and political protesters flood the streets with song.In this atmosphere of disquiet, an American teacher navigates a life transformed by the discovery and loss of love. As he prepares to leave the place he’s come to call home, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad, each bearing uncanny reminders of his past. A queer student’s confession recalls his own first love, a stranger’s seduction devolves into paternal sadism, and a romance with another foreigner opens, and heals, old wounds. Each echo reveals startling insights about what it means to seek connection: with those we love, with the places we inhabit, and with our own fugitive selves.Cleanness revisits and expands the world of Garth Greenwell’s beloved debut, What Belongs to You, declared “an instant classic” by The New York Times Book Review. In exacting, elegant prose, he transcribes the strange dialects of desire, cementing his stature as one of our most vital living writers. 
 Review 
“Incandescent ... [Greenwell's] writing about sex is altogether scorching. You pick his novels up with asbestos mitts, and set them down upon trivets to protect your table from heat damage ...Greenwell has an uncanny gift, one that comes along rarely.” ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review“Extraordinary ... The overall effect is even more impressive than [What Belongs to You] ... The range in these stories is part of their triumph and part of what makes their existential sorrow so profound ... Incomparably bittersweet ... Brilliant.”―Ron Charles, The Washington Post"The casual grandeur of Garth Greenwell’s prose, unfurling in page-long paragraphs and elegantly garrulous sentences, tempts the vulnerable reader into danger zones . . . These stories are masterpieces of radical eroticism, but they wouldn’t have the same impact if they didn’t appear in a gorgeously varied narrative fabric, amid scenes of more wholesome love, finely sketched vistas of political unrest, haunting evocations of a damaged childhood, and moments of mundane rapture. Tenderness, violence, animosity, and compassion are the outer edges of what feels like a total map of the human condition." ―Alex Ross, The New Yorker (Best Books of 2020) "Greenwell is a relentless truth-teller with a poet’s eye for detail and a shimmering prose style that’s reason enough to read the book."―Jim Zarroli, NPR Books (Best Books of 2020)"Greenwell is among our finest writers on sex and desire."―Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire (Best Books of 2020 So Far)"An aching examination of intimacy and power."―Annabel Gutterman, TIME (Best Books of 2020 So Far)“Exquisite ... Greenwell displays a precocious ability to take readers into his narrator's mind and body ... Greenwell submerges readers in the bedroom, sharing his protagonist's intense attractions and doubts ... Greenwell's prose sings, even as much of the music occurs in the rests. This writer understands beauty and loss, sorrow and hope, his fluid writing making the telling seem effortless.” ―Martha Ann Toll, NPR Books“[Cleanness] is, quite simply, a work of genius that will change the way you understand the world and your place in it.” ―Bethanne Patrick, The Washington Post“Gorgeous.” ―Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly“In much the way that other male American write

Kink: stories

Kwon, R.O.

Contemporary

Scribner UK

Fiction. On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American newly arrived in a foreign city pays a young man for sex. Over the next months, as what at first seems an uncomplicated transaction deepens into something more intricate and unnerving, his discovery of the geography and griefs of an unfamiliar country is accompanied by the unfolding of Mitko's own narrative, his private history of illness, exploitation, and want. The story of a desire that grows increasingly ambivalent, poised between submission, need, and resentment, MITKO is a powerful meditation on the chances of history and privilege, on mutual predation, and on our inability to know with any certainty the natures of others or our own fugitive selves.

Mitko (Miami University Press Fiction)

Miami University Press

Cleanness export

Picador

‘This is an exceptional work of fiction, which places Greenwell among the very best contemporary novelists’ The i\nBulgaria’s capital, Sofia, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. Soviet buildings crumble, unrelenting winds lash the city, political protesters flood the streets with song.\nAmid this disquiet, a young American teacher prepares to leave the place he’s come to call home. In a reflective mood, heightened by his imminent departure, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad, each revealing startling insights about what it means to seek connection: with those we love, with the places we inhabit and with ourselves.\nWritten in precise, elegant prose, Cleanness is an almost unbearably poignant book about a man whose life, like so many, has been transformed by the discovery and loss of love.\nChosen as a book of the year in the New Yorker, Daily Telegraph, Observer, New York Times, BBC, TIME and Irish Times. 
A New York Times Notable Book of 2020. 
Longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize.

Con un inusual virtuosismo estilístico y una cautivadora potencia emocional, esta novela sobre el deseo y sus consecuencias está destinada a convertirse en un clásico. El espléndido debut de Greenwell ha sido merecedor del British Book Prize, nominado al National Book Award y seleccionado como uno de los mejores libros del año por los principales medios de comunicación estadounidenses. En los baños públicos del Palacio Nacional de Cultura de Sofía, un profesor de literatura estadounidense conoce a Mitko, un joven magnético a quien paga por sexo. Movido por un deseo incontenible, regresa a Mitko una y otra vez tratando de descifrar la historia personal del joven, marcada por los excesos y la incomprensión de un mundo que apenas le presta atención, pero solo consigue verse atrapado en una relación donde la ternura y el anhelo dan paso a la humillación y al miedo. Mientras lucha por reconciliarse con sus propios sentimientos, una noticia inesperada le fuerza a evocar su traumática adolescencia y la tensa relación con su padre, en una América profunda que tiene similitudes desconcertantes con esta Bulgaria gris y decadente donde ha decidido instalarse. Lo que te pertenece es una historia indeleble que se mueve por los sombríos rincones de una sociedad marcada por el comunismo y que ahonda en las cicatrices y las culpabilidades del pasado, esas marcas que pueden decidir quiénes somos y cómo amamos. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION 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 • A Finalist for the James Taite Black Prize for Fiction • A Finalist the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize • A Finalist for the Green Carnation Prize • A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A Los Angeles Times Bestseller Named One of the Best Books of the Year by More Than Fifty Publications, Including: The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times (selected by Dwight Garner), GQ, The Washington Post, Esquire, NPR, Slate, Vulture, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian (London), The Telegraph (London), The Evening Standard (London), The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Miami Herald, The Millions, BuzzFeed, The New Republic (Best Debuts of the Year), Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly (One of the Ten Best Books of the Year) "Garth Greenwell's What Belongs to You appeared in early 2016, and is a short first novel by a young writer; still, it was not easily surpassed by anything that appeared later in the year....It is not just first novelists who will be envious of Greenwell's achievement."?James Wood, The New Yorker 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, drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk, and finds himself ensnared in a relationship in which lust leads to mutual predation, and tenderness can transform into violence. As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he’s forced to grapple with his own fraught history, the world of his southern childhood where to be queer was to be a pariah. There are unnerving similarities between his past and the foreign country he finds himself in, a country whose geography and griefs he discovers as he learns more of Mitko’s own narrative, his private history of illness, exploitation, and want. What Belongs to You is a stunning debut novel of desire and its consequences. With lyric intensity and startling eroticism, Garth Greenwell has created an indelible story about the ways in which our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love.

Lo que te pertenece/ What Belongs to You (Spanish Edition)

Literary

Literatura Random House

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Books by Greenwell, Garth

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Greenwell, Garth. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Cleanness

Small Rain: A Novel

What Belongs to You: A Novel

What Belongs To You

Cleanness

Kink: stories

Mitko (Miami University Press Fiction)

Cleanness export

Cleanness

Lo que te pertenece/ What Belongs to You (Spanish Edition)