Joe Dunthorne

Joe Dunthorne’s most recent book is O Positive. His novels include Submarine and Wild Abandon.

His Secret Opening: Revism

Joe Dunthorne, 2 April 2020

In​ 1963, the novelist Gerard Reve became the first openly gay public figure in the Netherlands. By the end of the decade, it was known that he lived with two friends in an open relationship and had a fetish that he called ‘Revism’ (it involved seducing a younger man in order to offer him to an older one for love and torture). During the same period, when many of his generation...

Two Poems

Joe Dunthorne, 19 February 2015

The Old Days

Remember when everyone on earth was pregnant except for you which was a miracle

and the babies jangled down on their cords like oxygen masks during unplanned cabin decompression

and all language was lost to the cutesy voice. Woo are so wucky, everyone explained while you adopted

the brace position, amazed at the serenity that comes from looking after yourself.

...

Perpetual Sunshine: Radioactive Toothpaste

Malcolm Gaskill, 11 September 2025

Starting out on his quest into his family history, Joe Dunthorne doesn’t know what to ask his grandmother about the experience of Jewish families such as theirs in Hitler’s Germany. She tells him to...

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The Adulterants​ is a very funny comedy of arrested development: a coming-of-age novel in which the main character is 33. Ray Morris is a shallow, infantile narcissist reluctantly facing the...

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