Guest Privileges - Queer Lives and Finding Home in the Middle East

An intimate and illuminating account of queer lives and migration, homemaking and community in the Gulf, from a brilliant new voice in narrative non-fiction

**LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE**
**A 2026 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARDS FINALIST**

'An eye-opening tour de force' ALEX ESPINOZA
'Exhilarating' SUSAN ORLEAN
'Tender and insightful' MOHAMED TONSY

Upon moving to the Gulf States – where penalties for queer acts include deportation, imprisonment, torture and death – Gaar Adams wants to understand why LGBTQ+ migrants might choose to live amid such peril. He begins riskily gathering interviews outside the tightly controlled state media, leading with what he thinks is a simple question:

Isn't it harder for you to make a life here?

But as unforgettable residents share a kaleidoscope of stories – from uproarious Filipino salon workers throwing secret drag parties to a courageous Pakistani farmhand who helps his compatriots smuggle themselves across borders – deeper questions and fault lines begin to emerge alongside the halting steps into Gaar’s own clandestine relationship.

Weaving intimate and illuminating memoir with unprecedented reportage, Guest Privileges is a decade-long journey of dislocation – not just through the Gulf States, but into the very nature of home, belonging and how we form a life and community.

'Vividly reported and luminously reflective' NADIA OWUSU
'I was captivated and carried' ADAM ZMITH
‘Adams gives a voice to a queer community we hear much about, but little from…offering hope in a world witnessing the concerted rollback of queer rights' HUGO GREENHALGH