Unequal Loves
By (Author) Xavier Hennekinne
Gazebo Books
Gazebo Books
1st November 2025
Australia
Paperback
Width 130mm, Height 215mm
Unequal Loves is a luminous meditation on love, memory, and the quiet devastations of time.
A middle-aged man journeys through Japan with his wife, drifting between Kyoto's hushed temples and Tokyo's incandescent streets, while traversing the more elusive terrain of his own restless mind. Encounters with art, literature, and fleeting strangers awaken buried desires and long-dormant regrets, pulling him into a reckoning with the ghosts of youthful passion, lost friendships, and the fragile intoxication of beauty glimpsed in passing.
With prose that is both precise and tender, Xavier Hennekinne captures the ache of nostalgia and the gravity of the present. Unequal Loves is a profound and atmospheric novel, unafraid to linger in the silences between people, the impermanence of connection, and the bittersweet shimmer of what we almost had.
'Hennekinne's style is direct, witty, evocative and engaging.' Saturday Paper
Xavier Hennekinne is a French-Australian writer whose short stories and essays have appeared in literary journals around the world. He has lived and worked across multiple continents through his career with international non-governmental organisations and the United Nations. Now based in Sydney, he is the author of the acclaimed novel Lost Words (2019), illustrated by Phil Day, which was praised for its poetic precision and evocative storytelling. Hennekinne is also the co-founder of independent publisher Gazebo Books.