Darlinghurst, Sydney: these are the days of strange rumours. Talk you can catch the gay plague from kissing, or from a mosquito bite. Talk of the government building a wall around ‘Darlo' to keep the plague contained. Talk of old quarantine stations around Australia being reopened, of the army being used to round up all the poofters. Bashings increase tenfold and you’re dead meat if you don’t have someone to watch your back. Kit, Ty, and Johnnie, three young gay men, just want to live the life Sydney promised when they arrived.

Host City, David Owen Kelly’s third book, is a stunningly innovative fusion of memoir and alternative history that spins an affective tale of persecution, jeopardy, and survival from the fear and paranoia that marched lockstep with HIV in the 1980s.