county Love: Last News

Ahead of the release of her memoir ‘Love in Exile’, Shon Faye talks T4T relationships, the universality of heartbreak, and her hopes for her male readers.

When Shon Faye’s debut book, The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice, was published in September 2021, it blew fresh air into a public discourse about transgender people that had become increasingly stale, repetitive and toxic. The book was an instant Sunday Times bestseller, won awards, and was read by Faye onstage at Glastonbury festival, to an adoring crowd.

Now, she’s back. Faye’s hotly anticipated new book Love in Exile promises to upend our notions about romantic love, examining the political and economic forces that push us to compromise ourselves in pursuit of idealised yet unrealistic relationships. A memoir, the book takes the personal from Faye’s life – addiction, gender transition, sex, a slew of chaotic relationships, heartbreak – and uses it to shed light on the politicisation of our love lives.

Writing about love is an ancient practice, yet Faye brings a sharp, warm and illuminating analysis to the contemporary state of affairs – with some unexpected diversions, like her relationship with Catholicism. Already endorsed by the likes of Maggie Nelson and Torrey Peters, Faye’s Love in Exile is set to be the must-read book of 2025. GAY TIMES met Faye ahead of the book’s publication to talk about love, breakups and her work as a writer.

Shon Faye: The title came early on in the process. I was fundamentally interested in this idea of my own relationship to heterosexuality, this odd juxtaposition of my relationships with men [being] modelled on heterosexual relationships but then me being trans complicating that picture. That was where the title began, and as I started planning out the book the term ‘exile’ became a much richer metaphor, and it was actually about this way in which we understand romantic love to be this particular kind of love that conveys