BELOVED DISCIPLES

“A full circle tale of queer discovery, self-acceptance, love and loss, Beloved Disciples takes you through the deep trenches of grief. Mario’s debut novel is a powerful, painful delight.” - Queer Eye's Jonathan Van Ness, NYT Best Selling Author of 'Over The Top' and 'Let Them Stare'

“Queer, sensual, and surreal, Beloved Disciples pulses with intimacy and strangeness. Mario Elías writes with heartfelt intensity, blurring the line between the erotic and the tender, the dreamlike and the real. A daring debut that carves out a voice of its own.” - Saleem Haddad, Author of 'Floodlines' & 'Guapa'

“Beloved Disciples is an exceptional, unflinching debut by Mario Elias. An achingly beautiful story that explores grief and love with nuance and tenderness, Mario Elías is a bold new voice who demands to be read and deserves a place on your bookshelves.” - Elias Jahshan, Author and Editor of 'This Queer Arab Family' and 'This Arab Is Queer'

“The language of grief—and of the grammar of love it so necessarily calls up, in turn—is central to Mario Elías's swoon-worthy and wonderfully evocative debut novel, Beloved Disciples. Drawing on the drunken bliss of a first blush of romance and the ensuing crippling stasis of loss, the story of Albi and Simón feels, much like the etched sketches that dot its pages, like a lovingly painted portrait of contemporary queer desire captured in fleeting yet instantly unforgettable moments that exist somewhere between what's real and what's imagined, what's grounded and what's ethereal, what's here and what's been long gone.” - Manuel Betancourt, Author of Hello Stranger: Musings on Modern Intimacies

“I read Mario Elías’s stunning debut with my heart in my throat. A lush and lyrical story of love, loss, and family, Beloved Disciples is like watching a honey-hued film that flows back and forth in time. Here, desire is fierce and bright, pain is smoothed over with poetry, and first love is built of moments that are sacred like a secret church garden. The struggles of faith, family, and self-acceptance will resonate with so many queer readers. I was completely transported to the world and its characters, but it’s the voice of Simón as he speaks of his love for Albi that will stay with me. You can feel their love ache and grow across the pages like an Impressionistic painting—told through bold strokes of color that seem to change in the shifting light.” - Nathan Tavares, Author of A Fractured Infinity and Welcome to Forever