Guest Privileges by Gaar Adams

$27.95

Weaving memoir with unprecedented reportage, Guest Privileges is a decade-long journey of discovery through the clandestine queer communities of the Gulf States, and into the very nature of home and belonging

When journalist Gaar Adams first arrives in the Gulf States—where four out of five residents are non-citizens, and where the penalties for queer acts include deportation, imprisonment, torture, and death—he approaches the LGBTQ+ immigrants who choose to live there with one seemingly simple question: Isn't it harder for you to make a life here?

From the UAE to Bahrain and Oman to Saudi Arabia, Adams finds himself drawn to liminal spaces. The Bengali barbershops with men laughing over Bollywood movies. The street acrobats doing parkour along the Corniche promenade, which becomes a cruising ground for solo men after midnight. To his surprise, Adams finds queer communities all across the Gulf States—clandestine, resilient, and forever welcoming.

From the uproarious Filipino salon workers throwing secret drag parties, to a courageous Pakistani farmhand helping his compatriots smuggle themselves across borders, a kaleidoscope of unforgettable characters challenges his assumptions on finding a place in the world—for others, and for himself.

Publication Date: September 16, 2025
Hardback: 302 pages
ISBN: 9781938603303

Weaving memoir with unprecedented reportage, Guest Privileges is a decade-long journey of discovery through the clandestine queer communities of the Gulf States, and into the very nature of home and belonging

When journalist Gaar Adams first arrives in the Gulf States—where four out of five residents are non-citizens, and where the penalties for queer acts include deportation, imprisonment, torture, and death—he approaches the LGBTQ+ immigrants who choose to live there with one seemingly simple question: Isn't it harder for you to make a life here?

From the UAE to Bahrain and Oman to Saudi Arabia, Adams finds himself drawn to liminal spaces. The Bengali barbershops with men laughing over Bollywood movies. The street acrobats doing parkour along the Corniche promenade, which becomes a cruising ground for solo men after midnight. To his surprise, Adams finds queer communities all across the Gulf States—clandestine, resilient, and forever welcoming.

From the uproarious Filipino salon workers throwing secret drag parties, to a courageous Pakistani farmhand helping his compatriots smuggle themselves across borders, a kaleidoscope of unforgettable characters challenges his assumptions on finding a place in the world—for others, and for himself.

Publication Date: September 16, 2025
Hardback: 302 pages
ISBN: 9781938603303

 ADVANCE PRAISE FOR GUEST PRIVILEGES

"Through a mesmerizing succession of intimate disclosures and vivid conversations, the author profiled members of a flourishing clandestine community. ...  A striking cross section of an imperiled queer community that calls the Persian Gulf home." 

–Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Gaar Adams’s book GUEST PRIVILEGES offers an exquisite work of literary reportage, tracing the intricacies of queer life across the Gulf States. Turning on a question—“isn’t it harder for you here?--Adams interrogates the self-congratulatory mindsets that often cloud Western perceptions, in a voice that’s disarmingly personal, attuned to complexities and unexpected wit. A searching, evocative account of migrant lives lived between language and desire. "

—Paul Lisicky, author of SONG SO WILD AND BLUE: A LIFE WITH THE MUSIC OF JONI MITCHELL

"Guest Privileges is a vividly reported and luminously reflective inquiry into how queer people love, care for, and sustain one another in the face of oppression, violence, and erasure. Adams’ open-heartedness and willingness to challenge his assumptions create layers of nuance and complexity. This book will stay with me for a long time." 

—Nadia Owusu, author of AFTERSHOCKS

"An acrobatic and moving account of the paradox of solidarity across borders, full of laughter and love in the face of cruelty."

–Matthieu Aikins, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Naked Don't Fear the Water

"Guest Privileges is a luminous meditation on exile, intimacy, and the secret geographies of belonging. Over the course of a decade, Adams traces the quiet pulse of queer life in the Gulf States, moving through veiled gatherings and whispered solidarities with the sensitivity of both outsider and kin. In a region too often miscast by Western eyes, Adams reveals a hidden architecture of community—fragile, fierce, and breathtakingly alive. With prose as precise as it is poetic, Guest Privileges invites us to reconsider the meaning of home, not as a fixed place, but as a felt presence—ephemeral, hard-won, and utterly essential."

–Pardis Mahdavi, PhD, Founder and CEO, Entheon

“Beautifully written, meticulously researched, and deeply felt, Guest Privileges is an exhilarating journey through unfamiliar terrain. It is a story of queerness in the context of the Middle East, but it will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has yearned to feel at home.”

- Susan Orlean, author of THE ORCHID THIEF

“An eye-opening tour de force account skillfully examining how queer people not only build community under threats of imprisonment and death, they live and celebrate and love. An important and necessary contribution to queer literature and an essential one.”
- Alex Espinoza, author of CRUISING

“A tender and insightful book that weaves memoir into a chronicle of queer lives in the Gulf States. Gaar’s writing recognises that the West doesn’t get to dictate what queerness looks like, and illustrates with nuance how queer migrant communities in the Gulf States subvert expectations of what it means to find your home elsewhere.”
- Mohamed Tonsey, author of YOU MUST BELIEVE IN SPRING

“A charming exploration of queer life in the Gulf, filled with years of research, intimate interviews, and personal reflection. Guest Privileges is clear, thoughtful, tender writing about the multi dimensions of places and people. I was captivated and carried.”
- Adam Zmith, author of DEEP SNIFF

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gaar Adams is an American writer and journalist whose work has been published by The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Rolling Stone, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, NPR, Slate and VICE among others. He is a Penguin Random House WriteNow Grantee and former London Library Emerging Writer. He teaches creative writing on the Master of Arts program at the University of Hull. Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Adams received his Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University of Glasgow and currently lives in London, UK.

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