Cleanness is structured as a series of interlinked stories following an unnamed American teacher living in Sofia, Bulgaria, moving through encounters that are at once erotic, transactional, yet tender.

The novel is one made up of many moments of intimacy, power imbalance, misunderstanding—where language, class, and desire continually misalign. The title gestures toward a kind of moral or emotional clarity that never quite arrives; instead, the book sits in the ambiguity of connection, especially queer connection shaped by economics, geography, and the residue of post-socialist life.

What’s striking is the precision of attention—sex is neither sensationalised nor abstracted, but rendered as a site where vulnerability and negotiation coexist in real time.

This is the 2021 Picador paperback (first UK edition 2020), in good condition with light shelf wear and some minor surface marking to the cover, otherwise clean throughout.