Description

Casanova 20: Or, Hot World

Paperback – December 2, 2025
By Davey Davis

Darkly seductive, emotionally daring, and blisteringly contemporary, Casanova 20: Or, Hot World is a provocative novel of beauty, desire, art, and the slow unraveling of the body. Davey Davis—hailed by Torrey Peters as “an astounding writer, seemingly unconstrained by taboos”—returns with a story that gazes unflinchingly at the aching distance between intimacy and exposure.

Adrian has always known he is beautiful—so beautiful, in fact, that his entire life has been shaped by the hunger of others. From childhood on, strangers have worshipped him, lovers have financed him, and obsession has stalked him. At twenty-nine, drifting through New York City in the spring of 2021, he lives on the affections of women and men who offer him everything: money, vacations, shelter, indulgence. But devotion curdles quickly into control, and Adrian’s beauty has often put him in danger.

Then, one morning, the impossible happens: his beauty vanishes. Not all at once, but unmistakably. And in losing the currency that has defined his life, Adrian is forced to confront who he is without the world’s ravenous gaze.

Across the country, in rural Northern California, Adrian’s closest companion—Mark, a celebrated painter—is facing his own annihilation. A mysterious hereditary disease is killing him, the same one now ravaging his mother and sister. Instead of confiding in Adrian, Mark disappears into an obsessive ritual: watching fifty-two VHS tapes left behind by his sister, searching for meaning and legacy as his body declines.

Though bound by a profound, complex, and almost romantic friendship, neither man tells the other the truth about what is happening. Their silence forms the haunting backbone of the novel: one man fading from beauty, the other fading from life, both desperately seeking answers in the people, art, and memories that shaped them.

A bold exploration of queer desire, mortality, and the violence of being seen, Casanova 20 is a feverish, heartbreaking, and sharply intelligent novel about what remains when the body—once worshipped, once trusted—begins to betray its owner.

Format: Paperback