cute male literature

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Anon11/04/25, 02:07No.3997110

I'll start, I guess.An underrated poet that I really enjoy reading is Sandro Penna. Penna wrote a lot about shotas, youth and the quiet tragedy that comes with the ephemeral nature of such. His poems are typically very short (only a few lines long), but also very evocative. Some of them genuinely leave you stunned in ways you wouldn't expect. Very depressing at times, but generally nice. You can pretty easily find translated versions of his loveliest work in the collection "A Boy Asleep Under the Sun" online.>Midsummer at night. >You close your windows and bar the door >to satisfy your desire for a comfortable, familiar life. >My silence hides, >seething in the dark foliage below.

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Anon11/04/25, 02:23No.3997119

In a radically different vein, I'd like to bring up the novelist Hervé Guibert. He's another guy I really like. His work is cute/male related insofar that it usually pertains to attractive young men and male homosexuality, but is notably more... Grotesque than that of the aforementioned poet. I mean, he's most famous for writing about dying of AIDS lmao. Which is to say - he wrote a lot about decay, decadence and rot. But I think his work, especially his later work (My Manservant and Me, The Compassion Protocol, The Man in the Red Hat, Paradise, etc), is really worthwhile. His photography is also notably interesting, but I'm not going to post any of it here, as this is a 2D-only board.

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Anon11/04/25, 03:27No.3997130

I'll be basic and say The Song of Achilles

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Anon11/04/25, 18:47No.3997210

The Silmarillion if filled to the brim with beautiful long haired men

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Anon11/04/25, 22:48No.3997248

I must suggest More Than This, by Patrick Ness.

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Anon11/05/25, 18:44No.3997506

yukio mishima wrote a cute short story called "cigarette" about his early adolescence feeling alienated from other kids, where he comes upon two boys who offer him a cigarette. it's like 10 pages long but it's very sweet, this is an excerpt from it >Held in the custody of childhood is a locked chest; the adoles- cent, by one means or another, tries to open it. The chest is opened: inside, there is nothing. So he reaches a conclusion: the treasure chest is always like this, empty. From this point on, he gives priority to this assumption of his rather than to reality. In other words, he is now a "grown-up." Yet was the chest really empty? Wasn't there something vital, something invisible to the eye, that got away at the very moment it was opened? For me, at any rate, the process of becoming an adult refused to feel like any kind of self-fulfillment, or graduation. Boyhood, I believed, was something that should continue forever (and doesn't it in fact continue?). Why, then, should one have to treat it with contempt?...

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Anon11/06/25, 03:13No.3997703

I thoroughly enjoyed Brideshead Revisited by Waugh. It's a novel detailing the relationship of an artist with an aristocrat, named Sebastian, and his family, beginning at their first term at Oxford. I have also been meaning to read a similar story titled Maurice by Forster. From what I understand the latter is more overtly homosexual, so much so that it took flak at the time of its publishing.

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Anon11/06/25, 07:53No.3997731

I've been obsessed with Elric of Melnibone by Micheal Moorcock. He's one of the earliest examples of a dark fantasy anti-hero, and an early inspiration for the bishonen aesthetic, in short he's the first gothic pretty boy. I love his writing style and moody prose it's all such a vibe.

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Anon11/06/25, 12:59No.3997752

My own novel. It's a sci-fi novel, and at the center of it is a friendship between the prince of a dying empire and his knight and sworn protector - the two being the last meaningful remnant of the empire as it falls to a revolution. Part of the story follows them as they go into hiding together and try to blend in and live a normal, domestic life

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Anon11/21/25, 05:11No.4000626

Recommending Hermann Hesse's (The godfather of BL) novels for intimate homosocial/homoerotic relations between males

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Anon11/23/25, 07:34No.4000944

Sandel by Angus Stewart is a fantastic work of art

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Anon11/23/25, 09:09No.4000953

The Night Ocean by Paul LaFarge contains detailed (fictional) encounters between H.P. Lovecraft and teenage boys throughout his lifetime, in a supposed diary he left behind. I do not want to spoil too much, but it is a very interesting read, I would recommend it on the storytelling alone.

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Anon11/23/25, 09:24No.4000954

For a Lost Soldier, by Rudi van Dantzig

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Anon12/03/25, 21:33No.4002907

I had a thing for Raskolnikov while reading Crime and Punishment and coming across this fanartI was also kinda into Ambrosio from The Monk at the beginning of the book

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Anon12/10/25, 10:25No.4004420

I discovered The Good Thief the other day. I'm a little over a hundred pages in and it's very good so far.

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Anon12/11/25, 12:36No.4004683

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Anon12/12/25, 21:06No.4004948

Dennis Cooper writes almost exclusively about the Cute Male! Some grate and beautiful boys in his oeuvre ;) Fair warning though that most of it is pretty extremely Sadean, so its probably not for everyone.

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Anon12/12/25, 21:55No.4004953

Sorry, i dont know how to respond directly since i dont use 4chan very often! But what i mean is that his writing tends to depict graphic/transgressive sexuality, similar to the Marquis de Sade. :)

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Anon12/14/25, 01:58No.4005120

They're making a Magic Treehouse animated series...

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Anon12/29/25, 07:24No.4008207

I am not a /lit/fag by any measure. Most of what I read is fanfiction, and when I do pick up a book it's usually popular sci-fi and fantasy, or danmei/fujo-adjacent MLM romance. But I've been curious about Mary Renault's Alexander trilogy for a while now and was wondering if anyone could vouch for it. Is it an accessible read for a casual reader? Is it best to start with Fire from Heaven, or just jump right in to The Persian Boy?

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Anon01/29/26, 00:40No.4015029

Fantasy book from the 80s about a gay emo twink.

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Anon01/29/26, 00:45No.4015030

Imagine being the captain of the ship that saves the boys in Lord of the flies... Lots of correction required with those degenerated brats.

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Anon02/22/26, 22:23No.4021045

Bumping this thread because it’s cool sorry for having nothing to say

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Anon02/23/26, 02:30No.4021091

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5PYz_PV8Jc

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Anon03/14/26, 21:33No.4025459

I'm writing something in which two male characters have a relationship that is deliberately hard to classify. Too intimate for normal coworkers or friends, but too procedural and tied to their work for lovers or family, can look like abuse of power or high trust depending on who you ask. Not meant to be yaoibait but not really meant not to be either. Any reccs for literature I could read and study or draw on? I'm kinda just writing it right now with little thought put into how to make this land right for the audience. I liked Brideshead Revisited and it had something kind of similar but I'm wondering if there's more like that out there.

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Anon03/23/26, 05:47No.4027703

cute drawing of rimbaud

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Anon04/03/26, 11:39No.4030016

I just finished this. The plot is kinda thin, and the writing is simple, but there's plenty of nice romance scenes with the two boys. Normally I'd be discussed from reading a book with a cover like that, or by a female auther (the initials abbreviated is a dead giveaway that the author is a cunt with a chip on her shoulder) but I was pleasantly surprised. It's a fun, light story. Would recommend.

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Anon06/21/26, 21:52No.4047850

This thread seems more interested in literary fiction and classics than modern romance/genre fiction, but since it's dead anyways don't mind me shitting it up with my pleb taste.Reading Sorcery and Small Magics right now and I'm completely in love with it. It's so charming and a little heart-wrenching. Leo gives very strong Wei Wuxian vibes, if you swap the necromancy out for a classic dnd bard build. I'm so sad it's the author's debut novel and there isn't another one I can binge once it's done.

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Anon06/21/26, 22:07No.4047853

Also, obsessed with the Captive Prince trilogy. Laurent has to be one of my all-time favorite fictional characters. IMO, the plot doesn't really pick up at all until the second book, but the payoff is worth it in the end. I'd love to get my hands on the JP light novel adaptions for the illustrations.I've been half of a mind to read the author's newer Dark Rise series, but I'm a little put-off by the fact that it's marketed as young adult.

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Anon06/21/26, 23:06No.4047879

Anyway here's some art

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Anon06/26/26, 19:57No.4048849

ive been readingg some oldie goldies,,,,,, one which ive not seen mentioned almost at all anywhere is robert musil's confusions of young Törless,, its quite brutal and not fluffy nor romantic but considering it came out in like 1906 or something, the homosexual academia sadism and rape is quite graphic,,, def for fans of e.g. Mishima's Martyrdom and the likeim currently reading Friedrich Hölderlin's Hyperion and it has a chapter near the beginning describing a passionate gay romance, it's non sexual but immensely emotional and it really is a beautiful chapter,,, book is from the late 1700s too so it feels quite special,, emotional outbursts and displays of affection and breakupdrama befitting of the most delightful older shoujo BL,,

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Anon07/27/26, 02:28No.4055137

Just finished the fantasy romance series The Last Binding Trilogy. This one will be a difficult sell for anons here since an un-skippable 3rd of the trilogy centers around an f/f relationship. Even gender preference aside, the second second book was the slowest and most difficult to get through, but I did quite enjoy the first and third book that featured m/m romances. The first book, A Marvellous Light, could always be read as a stand-alone as well, though the character Edwin continues to get a lot of development later into the series.I think I will pick up the author's stand-alone title Swordcrossed, although this one has a very unfortunate cover as well. The illustrated covers are so hit-or-miss. I wish they'd stick with something more subtle.

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