Love in Exile
by Shon Faye
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Pub Date May 13 2025 | Archive Date Jun 13 2025
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | FSG Originals
Description
"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
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.
A Note From the Publisher
Advance Praise
"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
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780374615529 |
| PRICE | $18.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 224 |
