“LOTE accomplishes that rarest of literary feats—a totally fresh, funny, urgent iteration in a storied tradition: one hundred years later, the Bright Young Things are back.” - Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby
“A marvelous investigation into who is allowed to lead a glamorous, decadent life. Shola von Reinhold unravels the essence of luxury and creates a narrative full of invention. LOTE is a celebration of aestheticism and a debut that is not to be missed.” - Marlowe Granados, author of Happy Hour
“Brilliant. An incandescent singular work. A deeply absorbing meditation on black artistic expression” - Irenosen Okojie, author of Nudibranch
“LOTE is a decadent celebration of portraiture, queer history and Blackness, and a bitingly funny work of fiction. In this book, von Reinhold provides us with a mischievous new work of aesthetic theory, as well as a glorious and gorgeously imagined fictional world. Ingenious; irresistible; a dazzling first novel.” - Naomi Booth, author of Sealed
“LOTE is one of the most compelling works in trans fiction I’ve read in a long time.” - McKenzie Wark, author of Philosophy for Spiders: On the Low Theory of Kathy Acker
“The contemporary moment for Black life in the United States needs this decadent Black and queer meditation on beauty and aesthetics.” - Marquis Bey, author of Black Trans Feminism
“Shola von Reinhold’s LOTE recruits literary innovation into the project of examining social marginalisation, queerness, class, Black Modernisms and archival absences. A critically important and hugely original debut.” - Isabel Waidner, author of We Are Made of Diamond Stuff
“Von Reinhold’s rich and glorious writing . . . reads as though—to put it in their own description of a room draped in candlelight—everything has been smeared with gold oil. . . . It’s more than just the bliss of representation: history here is feeling, not just narrative.” - Skye Arundhati Thomas, Frieze Magazine
“Set amid an artist residency, this arresting debut effortlessly explores infatuation, reinvention, the erasure of black figures from history and gender identities in what marks von Reinhold as a unique new voice in literary fiction.” - Layla Haidrani, AnOther Magazine
“An inspirational, cutting, exquisitely written, multilevel excavation of forgotten Black lives and an Afro-queer celebration of art, aesthetics, literature, and society.” - Paul Mendez, author of Rainbow Milk
“In choosing to conjure Black voices through historical revisionism, rather than, say, Afrofuturism or pure fiction, the novel produces a new archive—a radical reference tool populated by real and imagined historical figures, Anons who have been festooned, fleshed-out, and freed from the rude imposition of marginality, anonymity and defacement.” - Izabella Scott,, White Review
“As a celebration of eccentric esprit, LOTE practises what it preaches by being stubbornly its own thing.” - Houman Barekat, The Guardian
“LOTE is a rapturous first novel, a queer black fantasy with angels leaping off every page.” - Molara Wood, Irish Times
"LOTE is a novel about the nature of art and about who gets to participate in its creation." - Eileen Gonzalez, Foreword
"A heady novel that explores, in multiple genres and forms—comedy of errors, writing-retreat novel, book within a book—the erasure of Black art from gallery walls, history books, and archives. . . . Von Reinhold’s sensual sentences unfurl like ethereal greenery as you read." - Hannah Gold, The Paris Review
" I will never stop recommending this book." - Laura John Joseph, The Guardian
"Author Shola von Reinhold's very first book, LOTE, is a tour de force. . . . The luscious, textured writing is astonishingly good, full of surprises and little-known information." - Reginald Harris, Gay & Lesbian Review
"A tour de force. . . . The luscious, textured writing is astonishingly good, full of surprises and little-known information. . . . Truly brilliant . . . on every level, leaving the reader very much wanting more." - Laura Moreno, Bay Area Reporter
"This book works to unpack the whitewashing, as well as the suppression of queerness, throughout history as Mathilda discovers more about Hermia and the residency’s role in her erasure. Written by a queer person for queer people, this book deals with the subject matter in an intersectional and refreshing way." - Hannah Martuscello, The Daily Wildcat
"Lote is like catnip for an academic audience: the novel is about intellectual labor and archival erasure, a kind of speculative fiction of Black trans/queer life largely absent from the British modernist canon. . . . Drop what you are doing and order a copy right now!"
- Juno Jill Richards, Public Books
“Shola von Reinhold, in her novel Lote / (A book which I advise you to procure) / Says ornament’s divine, one should devote / One’s soul to it, that that’s what life is for.”
- Cat Fitzpatrick,
Bomb
"A heady trip through forgotten corners, told in von Reinhold’s lush and atmospheric style, and one of the best debut novels of last year. Recommended." - Roz Milner, Lambda Literary Review
"I really admired how Von Reinhold balanced the more philosophical questions of the novel – for instance, what does it mean to be a Black person nostalgic for the aesthetics of a racist European past – with a galloping plot. It’s funny and weird and dazzlingly clever." - Alice Winn, The Guardian
"Blending documented and imagined histories, and writing their own historical book-within-a-book, von Reinhold writes a compelling historical mystery, a poignant investigation of race and gender identity, and a stunning work of aesthetic theory." - Myriam Lacroix, Electric Literature
"Steeped in irresistible, gaudy glamour, Shola von Reinhold’s LOTE weaves a web that is uniquely funny, undeniably queer, and often completely absurd." - Bianca Licitra, Literary Hub
