My Lover, the Rabbi

To the untrained eye, the rabbi is far from desirable. He is lofty and disorderly, he is aging and constantly losing members of his flock. But, to one man, he is the object of obsession.

When they're together, the two men torment, pleasure and manipulate one another. When they're apart, our narrator manically contemplates every element of the rabbi's being: his absent husband (who our narrator has also slept with), his alluring adopted son, his broken-down Pontiac, and maybe most of all, the universe between the rabbi's legs. Their relationship is tender but volatile, and their intimacy brews and curdles. Until, in an effort to sustain it, our narrator goes on an unrelenting, increasingly urgent quest to better understand his mercurial lover—one which threatens to upturn the lives of both men.

Lavish and lascivious, My Lover, the Rabbi is an exuberant exploration of devotion and desire, and the extent to which we can ever really 'know' one another. His first novel in over twenty years, it cements Wayne Koestenbaum as one of the most acclaimed stylists of his generation.