The Book of Frank

A visceral, surrealist tale of becoming, from the shamanic cult hero of contemporary queer poetry

Beguiling, outrageous, playfully morbid and frequently stunning in its surreal flights of imagination, The Book of Frank follows the eponymous figure as he grows from his troubled childhood into an adult travesty of the ostensibly straight family man in a male-dominated world. Along the way, he navigates a series of darkly comic situations, commits acts of grotesque violence, loses his soul in the post and debates boundary lines with a pig. Frank is one of the great literary creations: a man who can declare that ''however we seek another''s weakness is our tyranny'', as often touchingly innocent as he is monstrously cruel.

Called ''a contemporary masterpiece'' by Thurston Moore, a ''desert island book'' by Anne Boyer and ''this generation''s Dream Songs'' by Maggie Nelson, The Book of Frank is one of the crucial poetic works of this century so