BVBook Verdict
Essential Read

Blackouts

by Justin Torres · 2023

Literary Fiction · ranked #245 in category

Winner · The National Book Award for Fiction, 2023

A young man visits a dying mentor, Juan Gay, in a strange desert hotel, and the two trade stories — including the suppressed history of a real 1941 study of queer life that Juan has spent years annotating and erasing. Torres's National Book Award-winning novel is formally experimental, blending fiction, history and visual material into a meditation on queer erasure and recovery.

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The verdict

Category
Literary Fiction
First published
2023 · 2020s
Author
Justin Torres
Standing
Essential Read

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