Romeo & Seahorse — Nikolaj Tange Lange

A frantic love letter to love itself, Romeo & Seahorse is a sexy, frightening, tender, and visceral rush through Berlin's chemsex scene. Romeo has Hepatitis again. It's no surprise, and when you haven't slept for days staying awake is easy. And anyway, there's the promise of more drugs, more sex. Leaving his boyfriend at home he heads out for hookups, getting abjectly high and pushing his body to grotesque extremes in an urgent but dissociated quest for romance. What follows is a delirious trip through squalid rooms, hospital wards, and nighttime parks, broken by memories of first loves, European travels, and meditations on what it means to be a Romeo. With chaotic chemsex escapades and musings on romantic love, art and belonging, Romeo & Seahorse takes us to places not often explored in fiction. Written in a relentless, frenzied first-person narrative with moments of mind-bending wisdom and poignancy, this is a one-of-a-kind novel about addiction, desire, belonging, and want that's destined to become a queer classic.