num_pages: 195
description: On an unseasonably warm autumn day an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofias National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko a charismatic young hustler and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk and finds himself ensnared in a relationship in which lust leads to mutual predation and tenderness can transform into violence. As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates hes forced to grapple with his own fraught history the world of his southern childhood where to be queer was to be a pariah. There are unnerving similarities between his past and the foreign country he finds himself in a country whose geography and griefs he discovers as he learns more of Mitkos own narrative his private history of illness exploitation and disease.What Belongs to You is a stunning debut novel of desire and its consequences. With lyric intensity and startling eroticism Garth Greenwell has created an indelible story about the ways in which our pasts and cultures our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love.Listening length: 6 hours 11 minutes
language: English
title: What Belongs to You
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux