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"A gay Latinx man reckons with his past when he returns home for his 20th high school class reunion in Valera’s [sic...I'll have them fix that] dazzling debut...an incandescent bildungsroman."
––Starred, Publishers Weekly
One of Literary Hub's "Most Anticipated Books of 2022"
"Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books of 2022" - Electric Literature and BuzzFeed
Andrés, a professor of public health, returns to his suburban hometown to tend to his ailing father. Reevaluating his rocky marriage in the wake of his husband's infidelity and with little else to do, he decides to attend his twenty-year high school reunion, where he runs into the long-lost characters of his youth.
Jeremy, his first love, is now married with two children after having been incarcerated and recovering from addiction. Paul, who Andrés has long suspected of having killed a man in a homophobic attack, is now an Evangelical minister and father of five. And Simone, Andrés's best friend, is in a psychiatric institution following a diagnosis of schizophrenia. During this short stay, Andrés confronts these relationships, the death of his brother, and the many sacrifices his parents made to offer him a better life.
A novel about the essential nature of community in maintaining one's own health, The Town of Babylon is an intimate portrait of queer, racial, and class identity, a call to reevaluate the ties of societal bonds and the systems in which they are forged.
"The Town of Babylon is a grown up and realistic story that thoughtfully depicts the struggle to find out how to deal with the past when all you want is to move forward."
-David Vogel, BuzzFeed
Author
Alejandro Varela (he/him) is based in New York. His work has appeared in The Point magazine, Boston Review, Harper's Magazine, The Rumpus, Joyland Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, The Offing, Blunderbuss Magazine, Pariahs (an anthology, SFA Press, 2016), the Southampton Review, and The New Republic. He is a 2019 Jerome Fellow in Literature and his graduate studies were in public health.
