Call Me by My New Name

Antiboy
Valentijn Hoogenkamp
Translated from Dutch by Michele Hutchison
Seagull Books

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.