Caught in the cross-currents of a fraught divorce and a new love, the death of her mother, and a global pandemic, a writer plunges into an obsession with the work of 1960s French philosopher Roland Barthes. Her struggles to make sense of his work and life—and of what can happen to a woman's settled life in a single harrowing year—result in an engrossing, funny, earthy, and innovative lyric work. The quest for authenticity in motherhood, sexuality, and tenancy on the earth and in the home, as well as the unusual lyric form, make the novel unified in spirit yet transdisciplinary in approach.

ISBN: 978-1-949597-2-02
326 pp. | 5.5 in x 8.25 in
20 b&w illus.

WINNER OF THE Big Other Fiction AWARD 2023

"an uncategorizable triumph" - Jonathan Lethem

Profiled in The Millions, Bomb, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere

Finalist for Foreword Reviews' Indies Fiction 2023 prize

A Heavy Feathers 2022 Favorite 

Called an “American original,” Edie Meidav is the author of the prose collection Kingdom of the Young and novels including Lola, California, and Crawl Space. Her previous work has been recognized by the Bard Fiction Prize and Kafka Prize and has received support from the Fulbright Program, the Howard Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the Whiting Foundation. A senior editor at the journal Conjunctions, she teaches in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Edie Meidav is one of my favorite contemporary writers, and this is her best book. It’s open, wounded, true.

—Rick Moody

Another Love Discourse is an uncategorizable triumph, and a gesture of radical intimacy with the reader, one of which Barthes would be proud.

—Jonathan Lethem, author of The Arrest

A lush plunge into the sensorium: marriage, divorce, discovery. Meidav turns her fierce intellect to timeless questions of love, its attendant ecstasy and delicious pain. This book will unlock you.

—Margot Douaihy, author of Scorched Cross

This ruthlessly poetic novel does something I’ve never seen before: it pulls rarefied literary theory down into the gritty canyons of heartbreak and fear. One of the most original, most unlikely, and most devastating books I’ve ever come across.

—David Hollander, author of Anthropica

Another Love Discourse shatters boundaries and expectations: her narrative voice—urgent, lyrical, raw—compels the reader into uncommon and intense intimacy. This powerful book will stay with you.

—Claire Messud, author of A Dream Life