You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Harvill Secker has acquired UK and Commonwealth rights for Guest Privileges, “an intimate and illuminating account of queer lives in the Gulf” by Gaar Adams.
Ellie Steel, senior editor, acquired the rights in a deal from Sophie Lambert at the C&W Agency to be published on 28th March 2024, with Dzanc Books publishing in the US in spring 2025.
Following Gaar’s other journalistic work which has been published in the Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Al Jazeera, Slate and VICE, Guest Privileges explores the Gulf States, “where penalties for queer acts include deportation, imprisonment, torture and death”.
In the book, Adams “wants to understand why LGBTQ+ migrants might choose to live amid such peril”.
The synopsis says: “From the UAE to Bahrain and Oman to Saudi Arabia – he begins riskily gathering interviews outside the tightly controlled state media, leading with what he thinks will be a simple question: isn’t it harder for you to make a life here?”
Combining memoir and reportage, Adams investigates his own queer relationships as well as the Gulf States. In doing so, he asks “how we balance opportunity, risk, subversion and assimilation".
Adams said: ‘I often hear LGBTQ+ people and migrants in the Gulf States spoken of or spoken for in media coverage, but all too rarely are they spoken with. I wanted to redress this in the research and writing of Guest Privileges, a decade-plus process where I was continually struck by the undeniable parallels between queerness and migration.”
Steel added: “Blending new travel writing and memoir, the stories in Guest Privileges offer nuanced counterpoints to some of the Western misconceptions about the Middle East, while clearly acknowledging the realities, dangers and tensions of queer life there. Through multiplicity of experience, falling in love and introducing us to his friends, Gaar shows how people can and do build a life and thrive in places where laws threaten their freedom and livelihood.”