Queer Voices Reading Group

Join us for a cosy Sunday evening in the bookshop to discuss the work of one of the most important queer writers of twentieth-century Latin America: Pedro Lemebel.

'A powerful novel-artful, astonishing, deeply moving' Isabel Allende

'Lemebel doesnt have to write poetry to be the best poet of my generation... When everyone who has treated him like dirt is lost in the cesspit or in nothingness, Pedro Lemebel will be a star' Roberto Bolano

A rediscovered queer classic: the subversive, blazingly beautiful oddball romance between an ageing trans woman and a young revolutionary by a Latin American icon

It is spring 1986 and Santiago's streets are aflame with protests against the dictator Augusto Pinochet. From her lavishly decorated hovel, the Queen of the Corner embroiders linen for the wealthy, dreams of romance and listens to boleros to drown out the rioting and gunshots. When handsome young macho Carlos waltzes into her life, the ageing queer swiftly agrees to help with his clandestine activities. As a strange connection blooms, their fates careen towards that of the dictator himself.

Written in lushly imaginative prose that blends the sordid and the profound, the romantic and the militant, My Tender Matador is a transgressive queer classic of desire and revolution.