The Kingdom of Sand, Andrew Holleran
The Kingdom of Sand, Andrew Holleran
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

The Kingdom of Sand
A Novel

Author: Andrew Holleran

Narrator: David Pittu

Unabridged: 8 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/07/2022


Synopsis

This program is read by award-winning actor and two-time Tony Award–nominee David Pittu.

Andrew Holleran’s unique literary voice is on full display in this poignant story of lust, dread, and desire—the first novel in thirteen years from one of the most acclaimed gay authors of our time.

The Kingdom of Sand features a nameless narrator who has survived the death of his friends to AIDS and the loss of his parents to old age and tragedy. Now he must witness the slow demise of a friend just a shade older than he is. Semi-anonymous sexual encounters, gallows humor, and classic films are his tools for staving off the dying of the light. In prose that’s in turn mordantly funny and hauntingly elegiac, Andrew Holleran takes the listener from a video porn shop off Route 301 to the memory of parties in Washington, DC, filled with handsome young men, to the lonely facades of rural Florida.

Holleran’s groundbreaking first novel, Dancer from the Dance, is widely regarded as a classic work of gay literature. His following works have established him as one of the great writers of our time. The Kingdom of Sand is an audiobook that will burnish his considerable reputation: a reverie to sex but also a stunningly honest exploration of loneliness and the endless need for human connection, especially as we count down our days.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

About Andrew Holleran

Andrew Holleran’s first novel, Dancer from the Dance, was published in 1978. He is also the author of the novels Nights in Aruba and The Beauty of Men; a book of essays, Ground Zero (reissued as Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited); a collection of short stories, In September, the Light Changes; and a novella, Grief.

About David Pittu

David Pittu is a two-time Tony Award nominee, as well as the award-winning narrator of countless audiobooks, ranging in genre from young adult (Scholastic’s 39 Clues series) to spy fiction (Olen Steinhauer’s The Last Tourist and Milo Weaver series) to the contemporary fiction of authors such as Jeffrey Eugenides (The Marriage Plot) and Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch) and many more. Pittu received the Audie Award for Best Male Solo Narration for The Goldfinch, which also received the Audie for Best Literary Fiction. Not only a veteran theater actor, he works regularly in film and television. He lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by David on September 23, 2022

The near-universal praise for this book is deserved. Andrew Holleran has been quietly chronicling American gay life for more than 40 years. While Dancer from the Dance will likely remain his best known work, his latest may in fact be his best. Set in rural northern Florida, the theme is loneliness:......more

Goodreads review by Gerhard on March 27, 2022

The Church believes in the Resurrection, and at the Resurrection the body and soul are united. What age the body is, and exactly how the two are rejoined , I don’t know; when I asked my friend, he said, “I’ll have to get back to you on that one.” You know when a book comes out of left field and readi......more

Goodreads review by Constantine on April 18, 2022

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ ½ Genre: Literary Fiction + LGBTQIA The Kingdom of Sand is the story of loneliness, isolation, and the feeling of not belonging whether it is to the family, friends, or society. The book is narrated in first-person style. Our narrator is a nameless person. He is a single aging gay man who......more

Goodreads review by Erik on August 12, 2022

In The Kingdom of Sand Andrew Holleran returns to the literary world (after a 13-year hiatus) in a rambling, stream-of-consciousness writing that left me underwhelmed. The protagonist in The Kingdom of Sand is someone past readers of Holleran will be familiar with: a gay man, formerly a resident of N......more


Awards

  • Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year
  • Los Angeles Times Best Books of the Year
  • Los Angeles Times Holiday Books Guide