I wouldn't recommend this book to everyone, but if you're into ambiguity, transgressive sexuality, and a plot that doesn't fully resolve, read on. Dhalgren is a wonderfully strange book with amazing worldbuilding and eclectic characters. I read it a few years ago and think of it almost weekly.Publisher's description:
In Bellona, reality has come unglued, and a mad civilization takes root A young half-Native American known as the Kid has hitchhiked from Mexico to the midwestern city Bellona-only something is wrong there...In Bellona, the shattered city, a nameless cataclysm has left reality unhinged. Into this desperate metropolis steps the Kid, his fist wrapped in razor-sharp knives, to write, to love, to wound. So begins Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany's masterwork, which in 1975 opened a new door for what science fiction could mean. A labyrinth of a novel, it raises questions about race, sexuality, identity, and art, but gives no easy answers, in a city that reshapes itself with each step you take...