{"product_id":"my-lover-the-rabbi-9781803514000","title":"My Lover, the Rabbi","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTo the untrained eye, the rabbi is far from desirable. He is lofty and disorderly, he is aging and constantly losing members of his flock. But, to one man, he is the object of obsession.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen they're together, the two men torment, pleasure and manipulate one another. When they're apart, our narrator manically contemplates every element of the rabbi's being: his absent husband (who our narrator has also slept with), his alluring adopted son, his broken-down Pontiac, and maybe most of all, the universe between the rabbi's legs. Their relationship is tender but volatile, and their intimacy brews and curdles. Until, in an effort to sustain it, our narrator goes on an unrelenting, increasingly urgent quest to better understand his mercurial lover - one which threatens to upturn the lives of both men.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLavish and lascivious, \u003ci\u003eMy Lover, the Rabbi\u003c\/i\u003e is an exuberant exploration of devotion and desire, and the extent to which we can ever really 'know' one another. His first novel in over twenty years, it cements Wayne Koestenbaum as one of the most acclaimed stylists of his generation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ch4\u003eDetails\u003c\/h4\u003e\u003cp\u003eISBN13: 9781803514000\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFormat: Paperback \/ softback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNumber of Pages: 464\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eEdition: \u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublication Date: 30 Jun 2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublisher: Granta Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublication City, Country: London, United Kingdom\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDimensions (cm): 21.6(H)x13.8(L)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWeight (gm): \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch4\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h4\u003eWayne Koestenbaum is a poet, critic, novelist, artist and performer - he has published over twenty books, including \u003ci\u003eCamp Marmalade,\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eNotes on Glaze, The Pink Trance Notebooks, My 1980s \u0026amp; Other Essays, Hotel Theory, Best-Selling Jewish Porn Films, Andy Warhol, Humiliation,\u003c\/i\u003e and\u003ci\u003e Jackie Under My Skin\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003ch4\u003eReviews\u003c\/h4\u003eLike Ingeborg Bachman's Malina, My Lover, the Rabbi circles and penetrates the outer edges of perception and experience. It's a brilliant book, written with manic zeal and cool strategy -- Chris Kraus\u003cbr\u003eMy literary version of heaven. Neurotic erotic bliss -- Melissa Broder\u003cbr\u003eEcstatic, erotic, electric, and utterly captivating. You won't read anything else like it this year, possibly ever -- Andrew McMillan\u003cbr\u003eMy Lover, The Rabbi is so intimate, so fearless, I couldn't put it down. Poetic and voyeuristic, thick with unflinching detail, I am in awe of this vulnerable, beautiful book -- Michelle Tea\u003cbr\u003eWildly funny, proudly filthy, uncompromisingly committed to finding shapes for what really matters in life, this is an exceptional piece of writing. As obsessive as Proust, as entertaining as Almodovar, this deep dive into the strange equivalences of desire and loss is surely going to win Koestenbaum a whole new army of admirers -- Neil Bartlett\u003cbr\u003eOne of the most original and relentlessly obsessed cultural spies writing today. His alarmingly focused attention to detail goes beyond lunacy into hilarious and brilliant clarity -- John Waters\u003cbr\u003eA writer and thinker for all time -- Maggie Nelson\u003cbr\u003eKoestenbaum is an exuberant critic, enraptured poet, intoxicated historian... I can hardly think of a writer who is so exacting about his own enthusiasms, so diligent in his pursuit of joy, so principled in the defense of pleasure -- Brian Dillon\u003cbr\u003eI'll go wherever putto, poet, painter and-little did you know-lounge crooner and ivory tinkler Wayne Koestenbaum wants to take me -- Rachel Kushner\u003cbr\u003eWhatever his subject favorites include porn, punctuation and the poetry of Frank O'Hara the goal is always to jigger logic and language free of its moorings... His great and singular appeal is this fealty to his own desire and imagination... Figuring it out, after all, is a life sentence -- Parul Sehgal * The New York Times *\u003cbr\u003eAn incantatory novel that works its magic on the reader. My Lover, the Rabbi unfolds, sentence by sentence, at the mercy of language itself. No one writes like Wayne Koestenbaum and this book, like his prose, is playful, theatrical, surprising, sophisticated -- Lauren Aimee Curtis\u003cbr\u003eMuch anticipated... Fans of Garth Greenwell will delight in Koestenbaum's demonstration of the sublime against corporeal obsession, play, need, humiliation, grief, desire, camp, refusal to engage in any heteronormative norms * Electric Lit *\u003cbr\u003eI found myself cackling...from beginning to end... [Koestenbaum's] sensibility for comic detail...is consistently this novel's greatest strength... [He] is a stylist who writes with elegance, nerve and dexterity * Haaretz *\u003cbr\u003eWill have some choking on their cornflakes from its very first page, as Koestenbaum's narrator delights in the intimate details of his sexual relationship with a practising rabbi... A groundbreaking artist * Telegraph *\u003cbr\u003eThe poet, artist and writer has always maintained a cult status in America... So thank goodness a UK publisher has finally caved; Granta have released Koestenbaum's newest novel, My Lover, the Rabbi, a slutty and bizarre doorstopper that, like much of the author's work defies classification * The Skinny *\u003cbr\u003eRhapsodic... This is the rare novel that believably analogizes sex with matters of the spirit and intellect, suggesting that a through-line of tender scrutiny courses through each of these spheres * Vulture *\u003cbr\u003eAs fierce and strange as anything you're going to read this year... A gloriously original evocation of the unknowability of any object of desire, and - beyond that - a vision of what it might feel like to admit to the inability of love to triumph over death... Koestenbaum writes like the best kind of angel, one who is resolutely unafraid of coming down to earth -- Neil Bartlett * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eNeurotic and erotic * Tatler *\u003cbr\u003eVoyeuristic, perverted and hilarious... My Lover, the Rabbi unfolds as an unflinching enquiry into the self-consuming grammar of want: the way longing loops back on itself, feeding not on its object but on its own appetite -- Nate Lippens * TANK Magazine *","brand":"Wayne Koestenbaum","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48926808768729,"sku":"9781803514000","price":34.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0502\/9530\/8441\/files\/9781803514000.jpg?v=1783736304","url":"https:\/\/www.arielbooks.com.au\/products\/my-lover-the-rabbi-9781803514000","provider":"Ariel","version":"1.0","type":"link"}