Two strangers meet in Manhattan and spend a perfect night together. In Tokyo, they have seven days to see if that one night might mean something more.

Landon’s living alone in Tokyo as a British ‘expat’, Louie’s visiting while he anxiously waits for approval on his US visa. Against the backdrop of a misty Tokyo Spring, their precious time together is spent wandering into side streets and coffee shops, sharing unmade beds and plates of food. But as the days tick by, Louie’s expectations start to overtake reality and he falls too deeply for a life that’s not yet his.

Breathtakingly tender, Seven Days in Tokyo is an astonishing debut about the intricacies of desire and a search for belonging. It is a lyrical, immersive portrait of how some things, however beautiful and profound, are destined to be as short-lived as the cherry blossoms.

‘A study of misplaced desire and a poetic love letter to the city itself’ Jemma Kennedy, playwright

'Alvior's protagonist and love interest are as complexly built as a Sally Rooney couple' Zahra Barri, author of Daughters of the Nile

Paul David Gould

Last Dance at the Discotheque for Deviants

$18.95

The venue was the canteen block of the Red Hammer Cement Works. It was the usual set-up: way out of town, secretive directions to get there, and disco lights blazing…

Moscow, 1993. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union have brought unimaginable change to Russia. With this change come new freedoms: freedom to travel abroad and to befriend Westerners, freedom to make money, and even the freedom for an underground gay scene to take root.

Encouraged by the new climate of openness, twenty-one-year-old Kostya ventures out of the closet and resolves to pursue his dreams: to work in the theatre and to find love as his idol Tchaikovsky never could. Those dreams, however, lead to tragedy – not only for Kostya, but for his mother and for the two young men he loves, as all three face up to the ways they have betrayed him.

Last Dance at the Discotheque for Deviants is both a gripping thriller and a poignant, very human tale of people beset by forces beyond their control, in a world where all the old certainties have crumbled and it’s far from clear what will eventually take their place.