How much distance and difference can intimacy hold? How much proximity and likeness does it require? What can we learn from its capacities? And what could we salvage from its limits?

Curious Affinities unravels the risks and possibilities brought forth by unconventional styles of intimacy. Across kinship, friendship, romance and community, the threads of social relation are entangled by race, class and queerness in unexpected and generative ways, as we find ourselves rent to shreds and stitched back together in the name of common feelings.

In rousing poetry and incisive prose, Sophie Chauhan reflects on the bonds and boundaries that govern our collective ways of life and wonders how they might be reimagined.

‘A lyrical exploration of the personal and political residues of intimacy … Chauhan offers an unbounded view of life lived relationally.’ — The Skinny

‘Precise, sensual and heady, like the burn of skin when someone first touches you.’ — Anahit Behrooz, author of BFFs: The Radical Potential of Female Friendship

‘Beautiful, astute and full of love, Curious Affinities is a book brimming with poetic brilliance.’ — Sophie K. Rosa, author of Radical Intimacy

‘This book will playfully rearrange every particle of your being … Chauhan worlds and re-worlds with gorgeous, resonating complexity.’ — Pear Nuallak, author of Pearls from Their Mouth

REVIEW: Curious Affinities — The Skinny

23 November 2023
Paperback / 9781914221262
ebook / 9781914221279
198 × 129 mm
146 pages