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The Gallopers

Jon Ransom author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Muswell Press

Publishing:23rd Jan '25

£9.99

This title is due to be published on 23rd January, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

The Gallopers cover

From the author of The Whale Tattoo, winner of the Polari First Book Award 2023.The Gallopers received outstanding reviews when it was published in hardback in Jan 2024 . Now in paperback and picked by many to be on the Booker Prize longlist. Three men bound together in a blistering story that spans 30 years, from 1953 into the 1980s and the AIDS epidemic, The Gallopers is a visceral and mesmerising novel of deceit, desire and unspeakable loss.

This is a lust-drenched, ache-filled gay love triangle that gnarls into a sly emotional thriller. Three men bound together in a blistering story that spans 30 years, from 1953 into the 1980s and the AIDS epidemic, The Gallopers is a visceral and mesmerising novel of deceit, desire and unspeakable loss.1953. Eli is nineteen years old and lives alongside a cursed field with his strange aunt Dreama. Six months before, his mother disappeared during the North Sea flood. Unsure of his place in the world and of the man he is becoming, Eli is ready to run. Shane Wright is a man with plenty to hide. Caught in a complicated relationship with Eli, Shane is desperate to maintain the double life that he has created for himself. Then Jimmy Smart appears. Jimmy Smart, the mysterious showman who turns the gallopers at the fair. Under his watchful gaze, Eli discovers a world he knows nothing about with rules he cannot understand.

'This is an excellent and vital addition to the queer canon’ Matt Cain. ‘Ransom has written a hypnotic and even more mysterious second novel…This is a lust-drenched, ache-filled gay love triangle of sorts that gnarls into a sly emotional thriller. The Gallopers is a whispered howl of a novel’ Guardian. The Gallopers reads very much like Tennessee Williams. Ransom’s writing matches sensitivity with winning boldness and stands out for its emotional honesty’ TLS. 'Tremendous character and flavour, bristles with originality’ Financial Times. 'I loved Jon Ransom’s debut novel The Whale Tattoo but The Gallopers is even better. Again, his characters are gay men from the lower classes, his setting is rural and his sex is hot, but there are also some surprises. This is an excellent and vital addition to the queer canon’ Matt Cain. ‘Gritty and unsettling, Jon Ransom has crafted a story of discovery and loss, the circularity of life and the shockwaves which ripple out from the centre of tragedy’ Irish News

  • Winner of Polari First Book Prize 2023

ISBN: 9781738452873

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

200 pages