Product Description
Darlinghurst, Sydney: these are the days of strange rumours. Talk you can catch the gay plague from kissing, or from a mosquito bite. Talk of the government building a wall around ‘Darlo’ to keep the plague contained. Talk of old quarantine stations around Australia being reopened, of the army being used to round up all the poofters. Bashings increase tenfold and you’re dead meat if you don’t have someone to watch your back. Kit, Ty, and Johnnie, three young gay men, just want to live the life Sydney promised when they arrived. Host City, David Owen Kelly’s third book, is a stunningly innovative fusion of memoir and alternative history that spins an affective tale of persecution, jeopardy, and survival from the fear and paranoia that marched lockstep with HIV in the 1980s.
“I loved reading this book. A wonderful time warp into 1980s Oxford street and the Golden Mile. Gay, gritty, witty, grimy, camp and glittery. The move from memoir to spec fic is so effortless it’s uncanny. Beneath the surface of Kelly’s bittersweet memoir is the disturbing yet not unrealistic proposition that journeying back to the past could also be a warning about the future.” – Fiona Kelly McGregor
REVIEWS
“For queer readers of a certain age, it’s a vivid time warp of a novel that will conjure the world of their youth…the fictional elements are realised with a full-bloodedness and emotional delicacy reminiscent of Edmund White.” CAMERON WOODHEAD AND FIONA CAPP, The Sydney Morning Herald (paywalled)
“Host City accomplishes a feeling of absolute realness – of ‘here-ness’ – as it masterfully blends fictionalized memoir with alternative history. The result is something better than either memoir or novel alone: a newly minted myth… [it] cannot help but resonate with oppressed peoples in the spotlight today… a unique, genuinely exciting Australian novel.’ FINLEY, Collins Booksellers Mildura
“The publication of Host City by Owen Kelly is very welcome indeed… this book is something of a wild ride!” GRAEME AITKENS, DNA Magazine Australia (featured in physical publication)
“What’s most striking about Host City is a sense of longing for the kind of easy camaraderie that comes from finding your people when you’ve felt othered by everyone else… Even though much of the book focuses on the difficulties of growing up gay, ultimately the story refuses to give in to bitter pessimism. Kelly, rather, goes to great lengths to show that it could always be a little worse if not for the bonds that tie us together with others.” MAKS SIPOWICZ, Meanjin
