The Penguin Book of International Gay Writing

The many facets of the gay male experience in literature, from all corners of the world, and through 25 centuries are presented here. More than 50 entries, which include new, unabridged, and previously unpublished translations, make this a unique and monumental work--a milestone in the literature. "A riotous party," says David Leavitt of this anthology, in which seventeenth-century samurai mingle with twentieth-century Russian emigres and Chinese peasants. As in The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories, writers both gay and straight explore the complicated questions surrounding love and sex between men, homosexual identity, relationships between gay men, their friends, and their families. From Plato to Boccaccio, Marguerite Yourcenar to Reinaldo Arenas, Yukio Mishima to Manuel Puig, these writings reveal an unexpected cultural and historical flexibility of attitudes toward homosexuality. In this anthology, by the co-editors of "The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories", writers both gay and straight explore themes of love between men. From Plato to Renaud Camus, Marguerite Yourcenar and Reinaldo Arenas, they demonstrate the flexibility of attitudes towards homosexuality. Forty-six stories of fiction and non-fiction from three continents. The writers range from Thomas Mann to Yukio Mishima, the subjects from Saint Sebastian to Mona Lisa. Several stories deal with a subject seldom discussed: seduction of boys by adult men