An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail

Translated into English by Anna Moschovakis

A friendship is a filiation we choose. It holds love and laughter; it can extend our sense of the possible. Moved to honour a form of relation often subordinated to romantic and familial ties, and to explore a part of her own history, Hélène Giannecchini pieces together an alternative genealogy of queer ancestors. In searching and sensitive prose, she sifts the past to bring existences deemed ‘marginal’ into communion with each other, traces of which may remain only in memory and archival fragments. Roving from Casa Susanna, a space of freedom from persecution in McCarthyite North America, to the diary of a man living with HIV in France, and to the life and work of pioneering lesbian photographer Donna Gottschalk, each narrative counters oblivion through loving acts of witness. A slantwise gathering of queer life and activism in the twentieth century, interspersed with images encountered by chance, An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail establishes friendship as a vital political force and offers a moving testament to its liberatory power.

Praise for An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail:

‘Helene Giannecchini has written a remarkable book that is both well documented and moving, an intimate and collective history of friendship as a means of social and political emancipation. I loved it’
– Anthony Passeron, author of Sleeping Children

‘Giannecchini believes that friendship is a way of binding ourselves to others: it allows us to step outside the idea we have of who we are and to change our position. In this movement she finds a vector of joy and power. I like that. I like it because I had thought in recent months that we’d already said everything there was to say about friendship, and it turns out we hadn’t. This book fell into my hands just in time.’
— Pol Guasch, author of Paradise Burns

‘As someone who has long struggled with conventional ideas of family and marriage, I felt relieved and hopeful reading this searching text. Hélène Giannecchini swings open the doors to a great hall of kinship, camaraderie, companionship and neighbourliness. She writes with love and optimism and a desire that we may all become part of communities in which we endeavour, as friends, to hold one another up. This came at a difficult moment in my own life, a period shaped by the death of my father, and I am grateful to have been able to read it.’
— Lara Pawson, author of Spent Light

‘This book is a small revolution in contemporary French writing.’
— Collateral

‘Hélène Giannecchini invites us to explore the thousand and one ways of composing an alternative genealogy. Essay, non-fiction or novel? We can’t decide and we don’t need to, because this book is so powerful.’
— L’Humanité

‘A compelling work, between investigation and narrative.’
— Le Monde

‘Hélène Giannecchini never gives the impression of appropriating the stories of others…. [T]he quality of the author’s focus draws from the resources she mobilizes to write about friendship: her curiosity and sensitivity towards fragile lives are combined with an imagination that grants dignity to that which is forgotten by history, and allows us to talk about those ties that have no name.’
— En Attendant Nadeau