Paradise Burns by Pol Guasch

When Rita and Líton meet at a party, they quickly form a bond that will indelibly shape their lives. Theirs is not an easy most wildlife is extinct and the earth is tormented by drought and floods; the last vestiges of natural life are kept under lock and key in a mysterious greenhouse a day’s travel away. Like the other young men of the Service, Líton is frequently enlisted to put out the seemingly never-ending fires that tear through the valley; Rita lives perched on a hill in the Colony, where other men, including her father, empty an almost barren mine. Yet their bond grounds them. They navigate the love affairs, setbacks, and thwarted idealism of their twenties together, finding in each other a vital reprieve for their disillusionment—that is, until Líton, like other gay men, falls deathly sick.

Unraveling back and forth across time, and told through the voices, conversations, and letters of a tapestry of characters, Pol Guasch’s Paradise Burns is a poetic, riveting exploration of an uncannily familiar ecological and existential grief, and a lament for an entire generation forced to inherit a world they feel unable to change. But above all, the internationally celebrated Guasch—crowned as “the spokesperson for a generation” (La Vanguardia) in his native Spain —has written a profoundly moving and astoundingly imaginative paean to the power of what it protects in a fallen world, and how, through love, it allows us to imagine a better one.