Queer Fiction Reading Group

Welcome to our Queer Fiction Reading Group!

This is an inclusive reading group open to anyone to come together to read and discuss LGBTQIA+ literature, with titles handpicked by Sanna. Through a queer lens we’ll explore everything from overlooked queer classics to groundbreaking works of contemporary literary fiction.

For April we are exploring Musih Tedji Xaviere's These Letters End in Tears. Set in Cameroon where being gay is punishable by law, this novel tells the heart-wrenching love story of a Christian girl with a defiant heart and a Muslim girl leading a double life. Told mostly through unsent letters, These Letters End in Tears powerfully charts all the different ways that love, despite all odds, can persevere.

A chance encounter on a football pitch in Cameroon sees Fatima cross paths with Bessem, opening up the page for an all-consuming, law and logic defying romance.

Even knowing that same-sex relationships are criminalised, Fatima and Bessem decide to live out their love. All seems to be going well, until one day tragedy strikes, and Fatima disappears...

Thirteen years have passed, and Bessem is now a university professor, keeping her sexuality secret, but the memory of Fatima never leaves her. When one coincidence becomes several, Bessem takes the signs as a cosmic command: to go and find her old lover again.

*Shortlisted for the 2025 British Book Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year