
Love in Exile
Shon Faye
(Author)This title will be released on
May 13, 2025
Description
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by Vogue and ELLE UK
"Uncommonly wise and honest. Love in Exile flooded me with a sense of continuity and hope. A masterpiece from start to finish." —Maggie Nelson, author of Like Love
"Should be required reading for anyone who wants to join a dating app, love ethically, or experience true partnership with other humans." —Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood and The Dry Season
A disarmingly wry treatise-cum-memoir on love in a lonely age by a celebrated thinker and columnist for Vogue.
Love is supposedly attainable for us all. But for most people, especially women, success with “love”—the yardstick we use to measure our value across romance, parenthood, sex, religion, and friendship—can feel out of reach, an experience frequently ascribed to a personal failing. This sense of unworthiness is, according to Shon Faye, “a form of exile: an intentional, punitive banishment that serves political ends.” Faye, a trans woman in her thirties, has felt isolated from love for as long as she can remember. So after the devastation of her first heartbreak, she figured it was time to find out why.
The subsequent investigation, Love in Exile, boldly reframes love’s elusiveness as a collective question. Conversationally frank and intellectually ambitious, these eight voice-driven essays unpack the norms governing love in our time with the insight of a shrewd outsider. Here, Faye examines her breakups with cis men alongside lessons from Lana Del Rey and Alain de Botton, explores the lovelessness that fueled her time as an addict, tackles the relationship between feminine self-worth and motherhood, and finally attempts to discover genuine self-acceptance.
The result is a dive into universal, deeply felt questions about love, reframed through a radical, revolutionary perspective. Written with the humor and rigor that made Faye an internationally bestselling writer, Love in Exile is a thrilling reckoning with love in our time.
Product Details
Publisher | FSG Originals |
Publish Date | May 13, 2025 |
Pages | 224 |
Language | English |
Type | |
EAN/UPC | 9780374615529 |
Dimensions | 209.6 X 136.5 X 25.4 mm | 1.0 pounds |
About the Author
Reviews
"Faye has an unusual ability to distill complicated, confusing dynamics into their essential components, offering straightforward advice that is never overly simple . . . Faye has a perspective and style that is distinctly her own but offers insight and enlightenment that is appealingly universal." —Chloe Schama, Vogue
"This is a memoir but it is also a kind of self-help book. Faye is trying to teach herself–and her reader–how to love in a different way . . . Her writing will shake your illusions about love, but remind you of the value of even attempting it." —Kitty Drake, The Guardian
"Love in Exile is lyrical and often laugh-out-loud funny . . . Shot through with warmth, solidarity and a kind of expansive, sororal love for the world, it’s a bracing and often sad book—but never a depressing one." —James Greig, DAZED
"In Love in Exile, Faye gets candid about her experiences of dating, heartbreak, and addiction, and reflects on how the scripts society writes for us—whether on motherhood, gender roles, or sexiness—influence our feelings of unworthiness and ‘failure’. But she also acknowledges that love isn’t just about romance—in fact, as she ultimately realizes, the greatest loves of her life have been her friendships." —Brit Dawson, Cosmopolitan
"A brilliantly perceptive manifesto on love in all its forms." —The Independent (London)
"Writing about love is an ancient practice, yet Faye brings a sharp, warm and illuminating analysis to the contemporary state of affairs . . . Love in Exile is set to be the must-read book of 2025." —Vic Parsons, Gay Times
"Faye sets out to examine, interrogate and deconstruct her topics through thoroughly researched and accessibly delivered political and social theory, providing alternative approaches and radical ways of thinking . . . incisive and generous." —Alim Kheraj, The I Paper
"Faye has written incisively about love, friendship and mental health in ways that feel so painfully accurate that you sometimes feel forced to look away . . . rich and thoroughly researched." —Halima Jibril, AnOther Mag
"A love letter to love—the types of love found in community, among friends, and—if they’re done right—within relationships." —Lottie Elton, Big Issue
"Believe me when I tell you I was wrecked before the end of this book’s prologue. Queer and trans people are taught that our desires are private . . . We are locked out of–exiled from–the traditional realms of happiness and comfort, left alone with our unworthiness. But of course this memoir-in-essays, from the author of The Trans Issue, argues the fairly obvious but no less revelatory point that we are indeed worthy of loving and being loved." —Michelle Hart, Electric Literature
"Shon Faye can break your heart and change your mind in the same moment. Love In Exile is a parade of these instances, a book that for lovers in this era will be both a comfort and a sword." —Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby
"A heartfelt and astute book that encourages us to reconsider our fantasies and assumptions about romantic love. Should be required reading for anyone who wants to join a dating app, love ethically, or experience true partnership with other humans." —Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood and The Dry Season
"With a very sharp, brave, dialectical brilliance, Shon Faye takes on the insurmountable question of 'who is supposed to love me?' This question is answered both personally and collectively in a series of essays that are gripping, self aware, and (if I may be so frank) radically seductive." —Brontez Purnell, author of Ten Bridges I've Burnt
"I loved this smart, searching, and moving book. Love in Exile is an exacting and thoughtful exploration of what it is to relate to men, masculinity, power, and gender norms, as a woman and as a trans woman specifically. Shon Faye's clear-sightedness and compassion, both in respect to others and to herself, is what makes her writing so powerful. Both disarming and self-possessed, this book is suffused with curiosity—and it's one that I found as thought-provoking as I found it helpful." —Katherine Angel, author of Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again
"I think Love in Exile is something that is so much better than brave, something that's much harder to achieve - it's honest. Even better, it's consistently honest. Whether Shon Faye is writing about God shamelessly, or shame Godlessly, every chapter left me reflecting deeply on my own experiences of love but even more so, the stories I've told myself about those experiences." —Mona Chalabi, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, illustrator, and data scientist
"I loved it! I think. Because after Shon Faye's compassionate, wise and often very funny book, I'm rethinking everything I thought I knew about love. An essential read for anyone who has ever loved, lost or been lonely." —Juno Dawson, #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of This Book is Gay and Clean
"Reading this made me sit and ruminate on love, and all its squidgy forms, in ways I hadn’t before. Tenderness and honesty lurk on every page. Shon Faye's thoughts are at once enthralling and confronting." —Jodie Harsh, author of You Had To Be There
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