Divided Publishing

In Thrall

£ 11.99
£ 11.99

In ThrallJane DeLynn

£ 11.99

In Thrall

Jane DeLynn

A dazzling classic of lesbian adolescence.

The Irish Times

Dear Miss Maxfeld . . . What I’m really afraid of is that I am a homosexual human being. I wish you were one too but I don’t think it’s possible there could be so many in one school, do you? Probably there is only one person who is homosexual in one place at one time and that one person (I am afraid) is me . . .

After sixteen-year-old Lynn writes her thirty-seven-year-old English teacher a letter they embark on one of the funniest and saddest love affairs in fiction, shrouded in secrecy and guilt. Set in the year Kennedy was shot, all Lynn knows about “lezbos” is that they wear their hair in crew cuts, buy suits like her father’s, and sprout mustaches over their upper lips. Trying to pass, Lynn continues to neck with her boyfriend and make bigoted jokes with her friends. Feigning innocence with her parents, each night she checks the mirror for tell-tale signs of perversion. Profound, witty, poignant, and highly charged, In Thrall is the first in Jane DeLynn’s trilogy of novels on sexuality and authority. It is as believable in its depiction of a closeted teen as it is heartbreaking.

With an introduction by Colm Tóibín.

  • 978-1-7395161-6-1
  • 21.6 x 13.9 cm
  • 280 pp.
  • Paperback
  • 19 November 2024

About the author

Jane DeLynn is the author of the widely acclaimed novels Leash, Don Juan in the Village, and Some Do. Her novel Real Estate was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Mademoiselle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, the New York Observer and Tikkun, and she lived in Saudi Arabia as a correspondent for Mirabella and Rolling Stone during the Gulf War. She is also the author of three plays, and wrote the libretto for the children’s opera The Monkey Opera, composed by Roger Tréfousse, which premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She lives in Los Angeles.

Endorsements (4)

Flawless comic timing.

Colm Tóibín

All Lynn’s phobias, aversions and hang-ups make her exaggerated but real . . . The great triumph of this novel is that DeLynn has captured the way adolescents felt, talked, and behaved during the early 1960s.

San Francisco Chronicle

A dazzlingly gritty exposure of a girlhood experience usually neglected by both private and public consciousness.

Reba Maybury

In Thrall is a beguiling account of the perversion, angst and ego of adolescence.

The Irish Times

Press (21)

Am I the monster?Natalie AdlerLux Magazine, 1407/2025
Undifferentiated SlimeMalin HayLondon Review of Books, Vol. 47, No. 1207/2025
Sweet Days of DisciplineMelissa AndersonBookforum, Winter 20252102/2025
Thrilling and bewilderingLucy ScholesThe TLS, No. 63582407/02/2025
Interview: Jane DeLynn by Taylor Lewandowski Taylor LewandowskiBOMB30/01/2025
Type on PaperEHFM21/01/2025
‘In Thrall’ is a flinty, funny novel about growing upJessica FerriThe Washington Post12/12/2024
"This feeling of uniqueness is part of the pattern": Jane DeLynn's In ThrallEkaterina IvanovaEra Journal, 19, Winter 20241712/2024
A Witty and Ironic Coming-of-Age Novel From 1982Brandon SanchezNew York Magazine's Making It newsletter (ed. Emily Gould)26/11/2024
Sex Cannot Be Taught, Just LearntEd NeedhamStrong Words, 542311/2024
The Strong Words Hot ListStrong Words24/11/2024
Five Books to Read in November 2024Something Curated22/11/2024
In ThrallJ. F.Los Angeles Times19/11/2024
In Thrall (from 2:05:18)Hannah MacInnes in for Ed VaizeyTimes Radio15/11/2024
Jane DeLynn: In ThrallMorgan BeckerThe Whitney Review, 411/2024
The Sheer Gusto of Jane DeLynnColm TóibínThe Nation11/11/2024
To Do: November 6-20Jasmine VojdaniNew York Magazine06/11/2024
A Pretty Girl, a Novel with Voices, and Ring-Tailed LemursSophie Haigney and Olivia Kan-SperlingThe Paris Review01/11/2024
In ThrallAndrew Chan4Columns01/11/2024

Bourgeois Coldness

£ 13.99
Pre order in rile* books
£ 13.99
Pre order in rile* books

Bourgeois ColdnessHenrike Kohpeißtrans. Grace Nissan

£ 13.99

Bourgeois Coldness

Henrike Kohpeiß

trans. Grace Nissan

Bourgeois coldness refers to an affective strategy that offers an explanation for how self-preservation works. Bourgeois coldness is one of the most advanced affective and aesthetic forms of preserving the structure of the colonial status quo. It creates an affective shelter in the world, unencroached upon by the immediate consequences of its many catastrophes. It functions like air conditioning – a complex technology which reliably stabilises the climate until those inside consider it natural. Bourgeois spaces – institutional and affective – stay cool and pleasant. But outside it’s burning.

Canonical critical theory by Adorno and Horkheimer enters a dialogue with Black studies through Hartman and Moten.

  • 978-1-7395161-2-3
  • 21.6 x 13.9 cm
  • 280 pp.
  • Paperback
  • September 2025

About the author

Henrike Kohpeiß is a philosopher in Berlin, working on social and political philosophy, critical theory, affect studies, Black studies and feminist philosophy. She regularly publishes work in academic journals and criticism in magazines. She organises and hosts events in Berlin, such as the conversation series ‘Feelings at the end of the world’ at Volksbühne. Bourgeois Coldness is her first book, and was published in German in 2023 by Campus Verlag.

Photo: Inke Johannsen

About the translator

Grace Nissan is the author of The Utopians (Ugly Duckling Presse) and The City Is Lush With / Obstructed Views (DoubleCross Press), as well as the translator of War Diary by Yevgenia Belorusets (New Directions) and kochanie, today i bought bread by Uljana Wolf (World Poetry Books). Their translations of Yevgenia Belorusets were presented in the 59th Venice Biennale, as well as in the accompanying publication In the Face Of War (Isolarii). They are the recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Translation Fellowship to translate the Austrian poet Ann Cotten’s Banned! An Epic Poem into English.

Endorsements (2)

Foregrounding affect, this timely book provides an inestimable philosophical argument for the centrality of Blackness in critical examinations of capitalism’s violence.

Denise Ferreira da Silva

Elegant and erudite in equal measure, this book will stand as a landmark diagnosis of the practices of denial in our time.

Andreas Malm

Press (2)

Eine Kälte, die das Leben gut durchwärmtMartin Hartman Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2711021/11/2023
The Colonial Lives of Bourgeois ColdnessHenrike Kohpeiß and Jonas BensAffect and Colonialism Web Lab21/03/2023

Upcoming (4)

10 November Amsterdam Henrike Kohpeiß launch
06 November London Book launch Bourgeois Coldness, Historical Materialism
04 November London Bourgeois Coldness launch, Housmans Bookshop
02 October Stockholm Henrike Kohpeiß launches Bourgeois Coldness, Nord Books