'Beautiful: unusual, intoxicating and bold' Guardian

'One of the best debuts I've read in years' Eimear McBride, author of A Girl is a Half-formed Thing

This is a novel of New York, the story of a city . . .

In 1891 Walt Whitman is returning to New York at the end of his life, knowing only it can inspire him. The city he saw built is changing still. By 1922, Robert Moses, the man who will build modern New York, stares out across Long Island, and imagines what it might become. In 1967 Robert Mapplethorpe is searching for love, excitement, and fame in the city of his dreams, and forty years later Edmund White walks the same streets, remembering nights of ecstasy and euphoria.

This is a novel of New York. Of the art that could only have been made there, and the lives that have built the city itself.

'Dirty, dangerous and delicious' Olivia Laing, New Statesman 'Daring, urgent . . . an important addition to the literature of New York' Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You 'Mesmerising' Stylist