Davey Davis Casanova 20 or, Hot World review and information of the content of the new novel by the American author. Catapult will publish the new Davey Davis novel, on December 2, 2025. Here you can read information about the content of the book, the author and the publication.
Davey Davis Casanova 20 or, Hot World reviews
- “A story that digs unflinchingly into the intimacy of both sex and illness … Davis’s characters are so haunted by the past that it often becomes syntactically interwoven with the present … Casanova 20 achieves this interjectory effect, punching through the well-charted terrains of sex, death, art, pleasure, and beauty with hedonistically lived-in details and incisive observations that rub the reader right up against the skin and the bedpan.” (Annie Lou Martin, The Whitney Review)
- “The novel’s conceit is big, its prose attention-grabbing, its sexual joie de vivre propulsive, but, in the end, the most compelling part is the tender nuance of its central characters as they love both each other and the world. The result is a rare gem of a book—afraid of neither joy nor sorrow and patient enough to find the human heart inside all its gorgeous language. A show-stopping novel that carries within it a quiet, steadfast heart.” (Kirkus Review)
Casanova 20
or, Hot World
- Author: Davey Davis (United States)
- Book type: American novel
- Publisher: Catapult
- Released: December 2, 2025
- Length: 304 pages
- Format: paperback / ebook
- Prize: $ 17.95 / $ 12,99
- Order book from: Amazon / Bol
Blurb of the new Davey Davis novel
A novel about art, desire, and mortality, Casanova 20: Or, Hot World follows a young man isolated by his extraordinary beauty and his strange friendship with an older painter.
Cursed by an extreme and unrelenting beauty, Adrian has drawn the frenzied attention of adoring strangers since childhood. As a twenty-nine-year-old in New York City, he spends his days drifting between affairs with women (and occasionally men) who provide him with everything he needs, from spending money to luxurious vacations to even, once, a mini yacht. With this generosity comes a dangerous possessiveness that often puts him at risk of much worse than heartbreak. But as people begin removing their masks in the spring of 2021, Adrian’s aimless sexual availability is interrupted by a shocking discovery: He is no longer beautiful.
Across the country, Adrian’s best friend and companion, Mark, a world-famous painter, has returned to the family home in rural Northern California. He’s faced with his own horrible revelation: He’s dying from the same mysterious disease that will soon take his mother and sister.
Despite the depth of their platonic romance, neither man reveals his fate to the other. Feeling as if he’s disappearing from sight, Adrian searches for answers among his thousands of lovers. In a race against his failing body, Mark becomes obsessed with watching fifty-two VHS tapes of unknown origin, left to him by his sister, before it’s too late.
Davey Davis is the author of X and the earthquake room. They write a weekly newsletter and mutual aid fundraiser about art, culture, sexuality, and people named David at itsdavid.substack.com. They live in Brooklyn.