Novels, essays, comics, or autobiographies, we haven’t let them go! Here are têtu·’s editorial team’s favorite books of 2025.
- Nicolas’s pick: Nos soirées, by Allan Hollinghurst (Albin Michel)
Reading Nos soirées leaves you not unscathed, as its realism makes us intimately familiar with the character of David Win. Born to a Burmese father and an English seamstress mother in the English countryside of the 1960s, this man studies at the prestigious Bampton School, from which he emerges as an actor, having learned to play a role in a social milieu that is not his own. If homosexuality is never presented as incidental in the construction of David’s identity, many other facets are explored with precision.
- Nicolas’s pick: All Lives by Rebeka Warrior (Stock)
All Lives rejects propriety, the hollow posture of the grieving widow and the impeccably helpful caretaker. Its straightforwardness tolerates no distance. Rebeka Warrior writes as she sings. Her texts are raw, unfiltered, with a disarming poetry. By telling love, illness, mourning and reconstruction through spirituality, she transforms the intimate into a collective experience. It is a musical novel, embodied, profoundly queer in both substance and form, and it received the Flore Prize.
- Florian’s pick: Blanche, by Maëlle Reat (Glénat)
In the 1980s, Blanche is one of the first people to contract HIV. She is only 19 at the time. Several decades later, it is her daughter, Maëlle Reat, who tells her story by translating it into the graphic novel format. Thus Blanche is born, the illustrated account of a diligent nurse and mother whose life was clouded by judgments, rejection, and the ignorance of her peers. We are left with the touching portrait of a woman who never stopped fighting, coupled with a welcome lesson on the ravages of HIV-related stigma in France.
- Laure’s pick: Les Forces, by Laura Vasquez (éd. du sous-sol)
Between a coming-of-age narrative and a philosophical wandering, a great novel that won the 2025 Décembre Prize. A queer tragicomic work as raw as it is comforting. After leaving the parental home, the narrator meets, in a lesbian bar, an old sapphic oracle who urges her to embark on a strange journey: a voyage to meet those who touch death with a finger, followed by followers of sects as alarming as they are whimsical. A coming-of-age novel? Perhaps, if by that we mean the path of a young woman who struggles to find her place and give it meaning.
- David’s pick: The Gentle Art of Weightlifting, by Martin Page (Le Nouvel Attila)
If, like many queers, you have a conflicted relationship with the gym that reminds you of the trauma of gym class at school, this book will likely do you good. In this essay, Martin Page describes how weightlifting strengthened his confidence, his autonomy and his freedom, and explains how reclaiming the power of our bodies can be a source of joy. And who knows, perhaps this year our health resolutions will pay off…
- Tabi’s pick: Bambi, an Ordinary Life, by Marie-Pierre Pruvot (Denoël)
Reading this autobiography means you are no longer alone during your commutes. Marie-Pierre Pruot, aka Bambi, accompanies the reader with a close and intimate voice, delivering stories filled with inspiration, curiosity and lessons. Reading Bambi, an Ordinary Life is to listen to this trans grandmother who tells you honest, incredible and deeply beautiful stories.
- Maurine’s pick: Fetish by Fetish, by Marie-Pierre Vancallement (Atlande)
Black-market hormones, police violence, profitable romances, tours to the four corners of the world, tragic deaths… it is with a testimony collected by a neighbor on the same floor that, at 90 years old, Fetiche recounts a life rich in authentic and whimsical anecdotes. The woman who presented the reviews of the famous Paris cabaret Le Carrousel for nearly 20 years offers us a time capsule that honors the memory of the pioneers of trans history in France.
- Thomas’s pick : The Ravaged Night, by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo (Gallimard)
With expansive and meticulous prose, Jean-Baptiste Del Amo captivates with this novel that blends coming-of-age, social chronicle and horror tale. The Ravaged Night charms both for its style and what it says about the 1990s, capturing the atmosphere of confinement. As an abandoned house reveals the fears and desires of a group of teenagers, the novel delights and chills Millennials who grew up with a Stephen King book in hand. One dreams of a film adaptation!
- And of course, têtu·’s pick: Play the Game, by Fatima Daas, our Personality of the Year 2025!
