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Minor Black Figures

byBrandon Taylor

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Over a hot summer in New York a painter falls for a priest, in this captivating modern love story from the Booker-Prize shortlisted Brandon Taylor

Wyeth is a newcomer to New York, a young Black painter who is trying to find his place in the contemporary Manhattan art scene. He shares a studio with his friends and earns money working for a gallery and an art restorer but he’s struggling with his portrait painting, unable to truly capture the life of his subjects.


Then he meets Keating, a white former priest struggling with his faith. The two men seemingly have nothing in common, and yet Keating shows Wyeth how to see the world anew. The hot summer progresses, filled with art openings, walks around the city, and Wyeth’s search for a long-forgotten Black artist. But as the men grow closer, the differences between them become more stark, until Wyeth and Keating must decide what they are willing to risk – for art and for love.



A page-turning New York novel and a sweeping modern romance, Minor Black Figures is an involving and tender portrait of loneliness and connection.


‘One of the most accomplished, important novelists of his generation’ Guardian

'A piercing, precise, and affecting tale of young love and high art' Kirkus

'Brandon Taylor is without a doubt our laureate of hyper-intelligent yearning - nobody does it better' Lit Hub

© Brandon Taylor 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Minor Black Figures is brilliant — an exploration of the fraught channel between faith and artmaking

Raven Leilani

About Brandon Taylor

Brandon Taylor is the author of the novels The Late Americans and Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a Science + Literature Selected Title by the National Book Foundation. His collection Filthy Animals, a US bestseller, was awarded the Story Prize and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. His criticism has been published in the New York Times, Bookforum and the London Review of Books and in his newsletter, Sweater Weather.
Details
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • ISBN: 9781529982176
  • Price: £14.00
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