Less follows Arthur Less, a moderately successful gay novelist approaching his fiftieth birthday, as he travels the globe to avoid attending his ex-boyfriend's wedding. Andrew Sean Greer constructs a comic novel that is also a meditation on aging, failure, love, and what it means to live a creative life without achieving greatness. Arthur accepts every dubious invitation he has received—a literary conference in Mexico, a minor prize in Italy, a fellowship in Berlin, a retreat in India—creating an absurd itinerary that takes him around the world. At each stop, things go comically wrong: he gives lectures in broken German, offends a famous author, and survives a Saharan sandstorm. Yet beneath the comedy lies genuine pathos, as Arthur confronts his fears about growing old alone and never having written work that matters. Greer, whose earlier novels explored gay experience in different registers, achieves something unusual: a book that is genuinely funny while also genuinely moving, satirizing literary pretension while taking the life of the artist seriously. The novel's warmth and wit earned it the Pulitzer Prize and widespread readership beyond typical literary fiction audiences.