Nevada

Imogen Binnie

09 June 2022
9781529092066
304 pages

Synopsis

Maria, a trans woman in her thirties, is going nowhere. She spends her aimless days working in a New York bookstore, trying to remain true to a punk ethos while drinking herself into a stupor and having a variety of listless and confusing sexual encounters.

After her girlfriend cheats on her, Maria steals her car and heads for the Pacific, embarking on her version of the Great American Road Trip.

Along the way she stops in Reno, Nevada, and meets James, a young man who works in the local Wal-Mart. Maria recognizes elements of her younger self in James and the pair quickly form an unlikely but powerful connection, one that will have big implications for them both.

Nevada is a hilarious, groundbreaking cult classic from Imogen Binnie that inspired a whole literary movement, and is now published in the UK for the very first time.

Part of the Picador Collection, a new series showcasing the best of modern literature.

This is the book that launched the trans writing scene in Brooklyn that changed my own life. The scene had a basic premise: trans women writing for other trans women. It seems simple, but it had revolutionary effects, similar to Toni Morrison's famous declaration that she 'writes for Black women.' [Nevada] remains an original
I fully tip my hat to former fellow Maximum Rock N Roll columnist and my sibling in the latter-day queer punk literary revolution; I say without hesitation that we do not deserve Imogen Binnie AT ALL...it is truly a joy to watch a master of suspense paint the page with a both-feet-on-the-gas-pedal inner monologue, that is at once, spontaneous, acidic, razor sharp observant, fully embodied and (most importantly) vulnerable...TENS ACROSS THE GODDAMN BOARD.'
I've told people that Nevada is the On the Road of trans literature, but that's glib and unfair to Imogen Binnie, who is a lot smarter than Jack Kerouac. Nevada crept in under cover of night in 2013 and assumed its position as a classic while everyone's attention was elsewhere...this is one for the ages.

Books by Imogen Binnie