Wise, funny and suffused with a radical clarity, Shon Faye’s new book is a manifesto for seeing and knowing love as the meaning of life itself.

Shon Faye grew up quietly obsessed with the feeling that love was not for her. Not just romantic love: the secret fear of her own unworthiness penetrated every aspect and corner of her life.

It was a fear that would erupt in destructive, counterfeit versions of the real love she craved: addictions and short-lived romances that were either euphoric and fantastical, or excruciatingly painful and unhinged, often both.

Faye’s experience of the world as a trans woman, who grew up visibly queer, exacerbated her fears. But, as she confronted her damaging ideas about love and lovelessness, she came to realise that this sense of exclusion is symptomatic of a much larger problem in our culture.

In Love in Exile, Faye shows love is much greater than the narrow ideals we have been taught to crave so desperately that we are willing to bend and break ourselves to fit them.

Shon Faye is author of the acclaimed bestseller The Transgender Issue.