Five Queer Novels You Should Read Now

In gay bars, back when they were open, I noticed the same reaction whenever I mentioned to someone that I was working on a book about LGBTQ+ history. People’s eyes would glaze over, they’d become distracted by their vodka sodas, or they’d notice a friend across the room. Then I’d hastily add: “But don’t worry, my book is different.”

I wrote The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America to tell everyone in our community—not just academics—about the secret history of LGBTQ+ equality in America, a story that began a generation before Stonewall. And although The Deviant’s War relies on thousands of historical documents, I didn’t want to write something as dull as a textbook. I wanted to make it just as interesting and exciting as a novel. History, after all, is about humanity, and humans are dramatic. We betray one another. We have sex.

While writing The Deviant’s War, to understand how to tell history in an engaging manner, I turned to fiction. Here are my favorite LGBTQ+ novels of the 20th century, books that are thrilling, scandalous and historically significant.

These books showed me—they didn’t just tell me—that we have always been here and queer.

The Berlin Stories, Christopher Isherwood, 1945

Before Liza Minnelli, there was Christopher Isherwood. A gay man and Cambridge dropout, Isherwood spent the early 1930s in Berlin, where he wrote “The Last of Mr. Norris” and “Goodbye to Berlin.” George Orwell described the two novellas, which constitute The Berlin Stories, as full of “brilliant sketches of a society in decay.” Although homosexuality is only implicit (read Isherwood’s memoir, Christopher and His Kind, to get the full story of his time in Berlin), the book prominently features characters who became gay icons, such as Sally Bowles—and, of course, it eventually inspired the timeless musical and film, Cabaret.

Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh, 1945

This book may be one of the most romantic—and heartbreaking—gay love stories of all time, even though its narrator is supposedly straight. Written by Evelyn Waugh, himself a closeted man, Brideshead traces the rise and fall of a friendship between two Oxford students, Charles and Sebastian. Beyond the book’s implicit queerness, it’s also a stunning portrait of the English aristocracy in the glory days before World War II.

The Price of Salt, Patricia Highsmith, 1952

This lesbian love story, originally marketed as “the novel of a love that society forbids,” was the inspiration for the 2015 film Carol. Before The Price of Salt, it was difficult to find books that portrayed lesbian characters as anything but stereotypes or predators. Many lesbian readers, at last, were able to connect to fictional characters who were fully formed, complex humans, just like them. And because Highsmith was primarily a writer of thrillers, The Price of Salt is an enthralling read—even if you’ve already seen the movie.

Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin, 1956

James Baldwin, the prolific African American writer and intellectual, wrote this book as an examination of another part of his identity: his homosexuality. It’s a tragic love story about the narrator, David, and an Italian bartender named Giovanni. And although the book is sometimes dark, it’s ultimately optimistic; Baldwin wants us to accept love, even if it means rejecting everything society has taught us. Plus, the writing is so stunning that you may find yourself gazing at the same sentence for minutes on end.

Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg, 1993

Leslie Feinberg was trans, lesbian, a revolutionary communist and an all-around badass. In Stone Butch Blues, Feinberg tells the riveting story of Jess Goldberg, who navigates a multifaceted gender identity in mid-century America. As Feinberg put it, the book is “a lesbian novel and a transgender novel—making ‘trans’ genre a verb, as well as an adjective.” Plus, as a communist, Feinberg refused to allow companies to profit off the book after hir death: You can read it for free on hir website.

Eric Cervini’s The Deviant’s War is out now.