Call Me by My New Name

Newly discharged from my stay in the literary ICU that is Garth Greenwell’s novel Small Rain, I still had tubes, monitors, and groggy returns to consciousness on my mind when I encountered the narrator of Valentijn Hoogenkamp’s Antiboy waking up in a hospital bed. Surfacing from the anesthetics, Antiboy, Anti for short, tells the story of Hoogenkamp’s transition and coming out. Described by the publisher as a nonfiction essay, but reading like an autofictional novel, this is the second book by the Dutch writer and artist, who is nonbinary and uses the pronouns he/him.