Night Terminus - by Ellis Scott (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

An evocative debut novel reflecting the determination and resilience of a gay diaspora as it faced extinction.

Beginning with a chance encounter in 1985, an unnamed narrator embarks on a physical and spiritual sojourn over four decades. From a one-night stand in Paris with the troubled and enigmatic Louis; to Montreal, through a divided Europe, and into the Iranian desert with the sick yet determined Yuri; and finally to Provence, where he meets the gregarious but wistful Frank, the narrator encounters a cast of exiles, fugitives, rebels, and artists. In a journey across continents and decades, we watch the impacts of one of the greatest health crises of the last hundred years through the eyes of those who both survived it and must now remember those who didn't.

At once an odyssey through time and a love story to the narrator's found family, this haunting, lyrical novel in five parts explores questions of grief, statelessness, and memory and is a meditation on survival in the age of AIDS.

A RARE MACHINES BOOK

Review Quotes

Night Terminus is a harrowing and thoroughly engrossing novel-in-stories about men who endured the AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s -- the survivors, the victims, and the survivors-turned-victims. Scott honors their lives with prose worthy of Sebald, dense and rich, summoning forth the memories and ghosts of that era. A must-read.-- "Gerald Brennan, author of Alone on the Moon"

An elegant, beautiful tale of gay encounters, survival, and fulfilment, glimpsing the experiences of many who lived through that era of love and loss.-- "Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner"

AIDS was the disease that broke everything. It laid waste not just to individual lives but to our communities, our history, even our sense of possibility itself. Forty years on, writer Ellis Scott has dedicated his heartfelt first novel to the work of repairing and restoring that loss. Reaching across decades and borders, he uses a sequence of haunting close encounters to tell us tales of not only what we still need to grieve for, but also of the tangled threads of connection and courage that we can, if we choose, use to bind ourselves back together again.-- "Neil Bartlett, author of Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall"

In this atmospheric and haunting first novel, Ellis Scott gives limbs and a beating heart to a grief made boundless by the onerous burden of survival. At the centre of Night Terminus is a transient community bound by loss, love, and unflinching grace.-- "Deepa Rajagopalan, author of Peacocks of Instagram"

About the Author

Ellis Scott was born in the U.K. and grew up in Canada. He has published nine short stories in literary journals, including The Iowa Review, Yolk, and The Fiddlehead. His first short story was nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize. Night Terminus is his first novel.