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  • Published: 12 April 2022
  • ISBN: 9781662601033
  • Imprint: Astra Publishing House
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $50.00

The Town of Babylon

A Novel




When his father falls ill, Andrés, a professor of public health, returns home. Reevaluating a 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 encounters the long-lost friends of his youth.

Jeremy, Andrés' first love, is now married with two children after having been incarcerated and recovering from addiction. Paul, whom 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 brief visit home, Andrés confronts these relationships, the death of his brother, and the many sacrifices their parents made to offer them 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.

A FINALIST FOR THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE 

ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022 – Boston Globe, BuzzFeed, LitHub, Electric Literature, LGBTQ Reads, Latinx in Publishing
*Recommended by The New York Times*

In this contemporary debut novel—an intimate portrait of queer, racial, and class identity —Andrés, a gay Latinx professor, returns to his suburban hometown in the wake of his husband’s infidelity. There he finds himself with no excuse not to attend his twenty-year high school reunion, and hesitantly begins to reconnect with people he used to call friends.

Over the next few weeks, while caring for his aging parents and navigating the neighborhood where he grew up, Andrés falls into old habits with friends he thought he’d left behind. Before long, he unexpectedly becomes entangled with his first love and is forced to tend to past wounds.

Captivating and poignant; a modern coming-of-age story about the essential nature of community, The Town of Babylon is a page-turning novel about young love and a close examination of our social systems and the toll they take when they fail us.

  • Published: 12 April 2022
  • ISBN: 9781662601033
  • Imprint: Astra Publishing House
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $50.00

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