The Living Realm, Jordan Tannahill
The Living Realm, Jordan Tannahill
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The Living Realm
A Novel

Author: Jordan Tannahill

Narrator: Richard Armitage

Unabridged: 3 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/08/2026


Synopsis

“At once an unflinchingly beautiful novel about queer desire, summer days, and casual sex that is also an elegy to friendship, grief, and lovers lost. Startlingly brave and brilliantly told, I devoured each page not sure what to expect next. The Living Realm belongs in the firmament of great gay fiction.” —Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize–winning author of John of John

This program is read by actor and Audie Award–winner Richard Armitage.

While cruising one evening by Teufelssee, a small glacial lake in the Grunewald forest on the edge of Berlin, a man spots a handsome stranger who bears an uncanny resemblance to his former lover. Only, Lukas died nearly thirty years ago. Yet the man cannot shake the feeling that it was really Lukas he saw. As the man spends a long, hot summer by the lake, he continues to encounter Lukas, and then other lost lovers as well. As he attempts to make sense of the strange occurrences and learns more of Teufelssee, he finds himself venturing deeper into the mystery of the forest, leading him to question not just his sanity but the nature of time itself.

Written with the lyricism and erudition that have made Jordan Tannahill an internationally celebrated playwright, The Living Realm is a moving, dreamlike novel and an elegy to the ways our lives become entangled with history, the natural world, and those we love.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About Jordan Tannahill

Jordan Tannahill is a playwright and novelist. His debut novel, Liminal, received France’s 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires. His second novel, The Listeners, was short-listed for the 2021 Giller Prize and adapted into a limited series for the BBC. His most recent play, Prince Faggot, ran off-Broadway for seven months in 2025. He has twice won Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, and his work has been presented at venues including the Young Vic Theatre and Sadler’s Wells in London, the Kitchen and Lincoln Center in New York City, and the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. He lives in New York City with his husband.

About Richard Armitage

Richard Armitage is an English actor and author, known for his roles in films such as The Hobbit and television series like Spooks and Hannibal. Armitage's career spans stage, film, and television, with notable stage productions including The Crucible and Hamlet. He also voiced Trevor Belmont in the Netflix animated series Castlevania.


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Quotes

"This lyrical and meditative novel from Tannahill . . . It’s a perfectly rendered story of friendship, love, and the porous border between the living and the dead." Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“At once an unflinchingly beautiful novel about queer desire, summer days, and casual sex, that is also an elegy to friendship, grief, and lovers lost. Startlingly brave and brilliantly told, I devoured each page not sure what to expect next. The Living Realm belongs in the firmament of great gay fiction.” —Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize–winning author of John of John

“It’s rare to read a novel that expresses so powerfully the wonder of existing in time alongside others: the possibilities this offers for loving and being loved, the obligations love imposes. The final pages of this beautiful, hugely ambitious book amazed me. The Living Realm is a novel that rises to its subject: the whole of life.” —Garth Greenwell, author of Small Rain

“A ghost story, a meditation on aging and the passage of time, a celebration of queer Berlin—Jordan Tannahill captures so much in a slim, hypnotic novel. Playful yet melancholic, The Living Realm tests the boundaries between the real and the unreal, and asks what it means to build a life and a community in the margins.” —Tash Aw, author of The South

"I completely inhaled and adored this gorgeous meditation on life, death, and the cruising that happens in between, and sometimes after. Sleek, dreamy, mysterious, yet totally grounded and profoundly sexy. An expertly crafted ghost story overflowing with life." —Samantha Josephs, author of Carrying