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Minor Black Figures
  • Published: 14 October 2025
  • ISBN: 9781787336438
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $38.00

Minor Black Figures

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
14 Oct 2025
EBook
19 Mar 2026
Hardback
19 Apr 2026
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Over a hot summer in New York a painter falls for a priest, in this captivating modern love story from the Booker-Prize shortlisted Brandon Taylor

Over a hot summer in New York a painter falls for a priest, in this captivating modern love story from the Booker-Prize shortlisted Brandon Taylor

'A genuinely swoony summer romance' New York Times

'One of the most perfect books I've ever read' NPR

Wyeth is a newcomer to New York, a young Black painter who is trying to find his place in the contemporary Manhattan art scene. He shares a studio with his friends and earns money working for a gallery and an art restorer but he’s struggling with his portrait painting, unable to truly capture the life of his subjects.

Then he meets Keating, a white former priest struggling with his faith. The two men seemingly have nothing in common, and yet Keating shows Wyeth how to see the world anew. The hot summer progresses, filled with art openings, walks around the city, and Wyeth’s search for a long-forgotten Black artist. But as the men grow closer, the differences between them become more stark, until Wyeth and Keating must decide what they are willing to risk – for art and for love.

'One of the most accomplished, important novelists of his generation’ Guardian

'A piercing, precise, and affecting tale of young love and high art' Kirkus


'Brandon Taylor is without a doubt our laureate of hyper-intelligent yearning - nobody does it better' Lit Hub
  • Published: 14 October 2025
  • ISBN: 9781787336438
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $38.00
Categories:

About the author

Brandon Taylor

Brandon Taylor is the author of the novels The Late Americans and Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a Science + Literature Selected Title by the National Book Foundation. His collection Filthy Animals, a US bestseller, was awarded the Story Prize and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He is the 2022-2023 Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He tweets at @blgtylr, where he has 90k followers, and his newsletter can be found at: blgtylr.substack.com.

BT

Also by Brandon Taylor

The Late Americans
Filthy Animals
See all

Praise for Minor Black Figures

Brandon Taylor is without a doubt our laureate of hyper-intelligent yearning - nobody does it better

Lit Hub

Brandon Taylor is without a doubt our laureate of hyper-intelligent yearning - nobody does it better

Lit Hub

Contemplative and sensuous… Taylor is onto something rich and appealing—a story unafraid to foreground love and lust, and that treats emotional ambiguity as a starting point, not as the fuzzy ending common in literary fiction. A piercing, precise, and affecting tale of young love and high art

Kirkus

Contemplative and sensuous… Taylor is onto something rich and appealing—a story unafraid to foreground love and lust, and that treats emotional ambiguity as a starting point, not as the fuzzy ending common in literary fiction. A piercing, precise, and affecting tale of young love and high art

Kirkus

Minor Black Figures is brilliant — an exploration of the fraught channel between faith and artmaking

Raven Leilani

Minor Black Figures is brilliant — an exploration of the fraught channel between faith and artmaking

Raven Leilani

Dazzling. . . a poetic meditation on Black art, friendship, young love and intimacy

USA Today

Dazzling. . . a poetic meditation on Black art, friendship, young love and intimacy

USA Today

A sharp, resonant novel about a young Black gay painter adrift in New York who spends one life-changing summer grappling with questions of faith, desire, and creative purpose

Bustle

A sharp, resonant novel about a young Black gay painter adrift in New York who spends one life-changing summer grappling with questions of faith, desire, and creative purpose

Bustle

Brandon Taylor is always a must-read, and his newest, Minor Black Figures, is another masterpiece… It’s a moving, thoughtful take on friendship, love, and art

Town & Country

Brandon Taylor is always a must-read, and his newest, Minor Black Figures, is another masterpiece… It’s a moving, thoughtful take on friendship, love, and art

Town & Country

Mesmerizingly detailed. . .this novel of ideas about art, selfhood, and faith is also a romance, a friendship story, and an enjoyable slice of one hazy Manhattan summer

Booklist

Mesmerizingly detailed. . .this novel of ideas about art, selfhood, and faith is also a romance, a friendship story, and an enjoyable slice of one hazy Manhattan summer

Booklist

Sexy as hell... Paced to the languid, sticky rhythms of a New York summer... Minor Black Figures is Taylor’s most accomplished novel — a sustained, idiosyncratic portrait of an artist... imbued with a fresh, tentative sweetness, and anchored by a genuinely swoony summer romance

New York Times

Sexy as hell... Paced to the languid, sticky rhythms of a New York summer... Minor Black Figures is Taylor’s most accomplished novel — a sustained, idiosyncratic portrait of an artist... imbued with a fresh, tentative sweetness, and anchored by a genuinely swoony summer romance

New York Times