The Kingdom of Sand

Brought to you by Penguin. Out in the drought-struck backwaters of rural Florida, The Kingdom of Sand's nameless narrator lives a life of semi-solitude, enjoying the odd, fleeting sexual encounter and the friendship of a few. His world is ageing, and the memories of another time flash, then fade - visions of parties filled with handsome young men, the parents whom he chose to spend his life besides, the generation he once knew, struck down by AIDS. But, when forced to watch the slow demise of a close neighbour, he is drawn back to the here and now, and his own borrowed time in this kingdom of sand. 'Affecting and engaging' COLM TÓIBÍN 'A wistful, witty meditation on a gay man's twilight years and the twilight of America' Guardian 'Bracingly honest and wise' The Times, Books of the Year 'Both melancholy and hilarious' New York Times © Andrew Holleran 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

About the Author :
Andrew Holleran's first novel, Dancer from the Dance, was published in 1978 to great critical acclaim and is now regarded as a classic. He is also the author of Nights in Aruba; Ground Zero (reissued as Chronicles of a Plague); The Beauty of Men; In September, the Light Changes; and Grief

Review :
[Holleran's] new novel is all the more affecting and engaging because the images of isolation and old age here are haunted . . . in 1978 Holleran wrote the quintessential novel about gay abandon, the sheer, careless pleasure of it: Dancer From the Dance. Now, at almost 80 years of age, he has produced a novel remarkable for its integrity, for its readiness to embrace difficult truths and for its complex way of paying homage to the passing of time Bracingly honest and wise... A beautiful way to describe how we fade away. Holleran's fifth novel - both melancholy and hilarious - finds the protagonist living out his days in his late mother's Florida home, navigating loneliness, a changing world and a life post-cruising. The book's image of isolation and old age is all the more haunting because in 1978 Holleran wrote the quintessential novel about the sheer, careless pleasure of gay abandon, Dancer From the Dance. [With] grim wit and flashes of sanctity from above... Holleran's writing is as calmly compelling as the repetitive tasks that occupy a monastic day. Holleran renders an elegiac and very funny contemplation of not just ageing but an age... A wistful, witty meditation on a gay man's twilight years and the twilight of America. Both melancholy and hilarious... Haunting. An unexpectedly timely novel - wise, shrewd, and in its way, kind, if honesty is ever kind. And written with the sure hand of a master. Every one of [Andrew Holleran's] books is a gem. If he were straight, his reputation would be immense. The beauty of his language, the empathy for his characters and the world he writes about, are unsurpassed by any other gay writing of our time... He is our Fitzgerald and Hemingway but for one thing: he writes better than both of them. Andrew Holleran writes about desire so beautifully it's occasionally forgotten that he's one of the best living novelists on friendship. This tender, often very funny novel is a book about that final field of play between friends, when all the masks are removed. I wish it never ended. Accomplished . . . Holleran is, as always, sharply observant when it comes to human relationships . . . The writing throughout exhibits the same clinical brilliance that Holleran made his own in his rightly acclaimed first novel, Dancer from the Dance, fifty years ago. His prose remains unnervingly precise in every detail. It is also wryly comic.