Guest Privileges

WINNER OF THE 2026 LAMMY AWARD IN LGBTQ+ NONFICTION

"Guest Privileges is an admirable account of Adams' ten years in the Gulf unpacking how queer and trans people are able to live, survive, and find belonging in a region of the world Westerners deem as 'impossible'...To witness the bureaucracy and legalities that don't stop queer and trans people from simply existing is a witnessing worth entering into." --Maya Williams, for The Rumpus

Weaving memoir with unprecedented reportage, Guest Privileges is a decade-long journey of discovery through the clandestine queer communities of the Gulf States, and into the very nature of home and belonging.

When journalist Gaar Adams first arrives in the Gulf States--where four out of five residents are non-citizens, and where the penalties for queer acts incude deportation, imprisonment, torture, and death--he approaches the LGBTQ+ immigrants who choose to live there with one seemingly simple question: Isn't it harder for you to make a life here?

From the UAE to Bahrain and Oman to Saudi Arabia, Adams finds himself drawn to liminal spaces. The Bengali barbershops with men laughing over Bollywood movies. The street acrobats doing parkour along the Corniche promenade, which becomes a cruising ground for solo men after midnight. To his surprise, Adams finds queer communities all across the Gulf States--clandestine, resilient, and forever welcoming.

From the uproarious Filipino salon workers throwing secret drag parties, to a courageous Pakistani farmhand helping his compatriots smuggle themselves across borders, a kaleidoscope of unforgettable characters challenges his assumptions on finding a place in the world--for others, and for himself.

Gaar Adams is an American writer and journalist whose work has been published by The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Rolling Stone, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, NPR, Slate and VICE among others. He is a Penguin Random House WriteNow Grantee and former London Library Emerging Writer. He teaches creative writing on the Master of Arts program at the University of Hull. Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Adams received his Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University of Glasgow and currently lives in London, UK.