12-09-2025, 07:44 PM
Set among the glittering clubs and grimy side streets of 1920s Berlin (with detours to Italy and Paris), these charming, witty, and erotic tales capture the trials and triumphs of early twentieth-century gay life without apology or shame. Granand, the pen name for theater director and author Erich Ritter von Busse, lost his battle against bigoted censors but won a shining place in literary history with this pathbreaking volume. Instead of hewing to the villain/victim dichotomy that haunts the representation of LGBTQIA+ life to this day, these stories reveal the complexities of the human heart with verve and compassion.
“Banned, suppressed, and long-forgotten, these stories deserve a place on any queer history reading list.”
—Hugh Ryan, author of When Brooklyn Was Queer
"This panorama, filled with vivid details, of Weimar Republic’s gay subculture is an amazing act of recovery. But the real revelation here is Granand’s prose: poetic and precise, quirky and beautiful it captures perfectly jazz age tensions, excitement and sexuality as much as Scott Fitzgerald or Dorothy Parker."