The Town of Babylon

A Novel

This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Buy on Amazon Buy on BN.com Buy on Bookshop.org
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app

1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Mar 22 2022 | Archive Date Mar 08 2022

Talking about this book? Use #TheTownofBabylon #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!


Description

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.
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...

Marketing Plan

National media campaign including print, radio, and online coverage 

Pitch for feature stories and author profiles

Original essays and short stories to pitch to major publications in advance of book publication 

Robust awards campaign 

Multi-month social media pre-publication campaign on Astra House's Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram

Virtual and/or in person author tour including independent bookstores and festivals

Highlight in Astra House newsletters and on website

Digital marketing/publicity campaign including features and reviews 

Targeted outreach to LGBTQIA+ publications 

Book club outreach and discussion guide

Bookseller outreach 

ARC giveaways in trade media, including Goodreads and NetGalley 

Library marketing 

Targeted #Bookstagrammar outreach 

Trade and consumer advertising 

National media campaign including print, radio, and online coverage 

Pitch for feature stories and author profiles

Original essays and short stories to pitch to major publications in advance of book...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781662601033
PRICE $27.00 (USD)
PAGES 320

Average rating from 12 members


Featured Reviews

READ THIS BOOK!!!!
Thank you at @netgalley and @astrahouse for my gifted e-arc of this book. I have to start off by saying that this book deserves all the stars! I LOVED it. I don't read much Contemporary Fiction, but I learned that the author was Salvadoran so I had to read it!
We meet Andres who's gone back to his hometown because his dad is sick. Andres wants to help his mom take care of him. While there he decides to attend his high school 20 year reunion. He reunites with his first love Jeremy and his other friends.
The characters in this book were such a highlight to me. They felt so real and even with their flaws. My favorite were Andres parents. They reminded me so much of my parents being immigrants in the US. I loved the writing in this book. I highlighted so many quotes. Alejandro Varela really has a beautiful way with words.

This book deserves so much more hype!

Was this review helpful?

For many, going home forces people to revisit their past. They are reconnected with family and friends, reminded of moments of trauma and joy, and are acutely aware of how they, the people in their hometown, and the larger community around them have changed since they last visited. Varela's debut explores the unlimited elements at play when the main character, a queer latinx man named Andrés, returns home for a class reunion. A moving story about navigating community and healing from painful pasts.

Was this review helpful?

Absolutely brilliant, one of the best queer contemporaries I've read in ages. Funny and smart and full of so many ordinary moments, so perfectly described. It's a book about a suburban town and all the people who call it home, but it never strays too far from the emotional journey of its protagonist. Sublime.

Was this review helpful?

This is a debut novel.
I wanted to get that out there now, because while it's not perfect...it was going to be a three-and-a-half-star read until a certain point...it's got the extra insight and clarity to lift the read to the next level. A polyphonic novel that travels back and forth between the 1990s, when Andrés left Babylon, and now, when his return is less an actual return than a retreat from the mess in his present-day life enabled by his sudden discovery that his mother needs help caring for his gravely ill father.
Andrés is a first-generation American, his parents immigrants whose relationship to the USA is fraught with the usual complexities and exacerbated by their closeted-but-clearly-queer son. His unhappiness, his entire life being spent trying to hide and not to call attention to himself, impacted them...but we're not really, despite the set-up, here for them. And that would've made things a lot more agreeable to me had we been let into that experience...but that isn't Andrés's story to tell. So, no sense blaming the story for not delivering something it didn't promise me.
As Andrés spends time with the awful US health-care system, he also decides whether his marital issues might be contextualized by a trip to his twentieth high-school reunion. (I've never been to a high-school reunion...leaving that place was a joy, going back seems perverse.) It's here that I begin to think, "oh boy, here we go down Bad-Memory Lane" and I was vindicated. A homophobe that Andrés strongly suspects was involved in an act of lethal anti-gay violence? A preacher now! His first love? Married with children! <I>Tick, tick, tick</i> as the expected dominoes fall. What saves the story is the anti-capitalist anger of it:
<blockquote>The suburbs are where people go to preserve their ignorance, in service of a delusion they've mistaken for a dream. They tired of the more interesting human experiment and fled. Cowards, the lot. Working class, middle class, and one-percenters alike.
&ndash;and&ndash;
There are places in this world where people worry less intensely and with less frequency. Places where the hierarchy isn't stretched tall and people aren't perched high above their loved ones. Egalitarian places, where families don't have to be self-contained battalions constantly defending against their neighbors and other strangers. But not here.</blockquote>
I completely concur. I, in fact, would go far more into the area...which is why we're reading Author Varela's book, not mine. It's a very interesting story for the middle-aged multitudes, this review of the past to come to some peace with the present. But honestly, I'm past middle age and I was getting more than a little antsy with a storytelling technique that I myownself feel works best in stories about younger people, eg <a href="https://expendablemudge.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-prophets-debut-novel-nominated-for.html" target="_blank"><I>The Prophets</i></a>
Then I read this:
<blockquote>Going home makes it impossible to forget the past, but it also ushers the past into the present, reconstructing it, making it easier to face.</blockquote>
And the view snapped into focus, I added that half-star back, and am recommending the read to you whole-heartedly.

Was this review helpful?

I can’t stop raving about this book! It is one of my favorite books read this year and officially part of my all-time favorite books. The book flowed so beautifully, the characters were so damn human, and I loved the public health perspective that Varela adds.

Was this review helpful?

I really enjoyed this book! I appreciated the author's writing style and the story. Looking forward to future books by this author.

Was this review helpful?

I have never recognized the world an author lays out as readily as the one Alejandro Varela wrote. By the end of chapter 1 I couldn't stop thinking "this HAS to be on Long Island." I saw the stories of my family in The Town of Babylon. Little snippets shared over the years of nonchalant 21st century racism. Being the only Latina in a private school. Being told outright by realtors "this house may be out of your budget" when you hadn't mentioned a range. Being told "I'm surprised she's so intelligent" from another mother when you pick up your daughter from school. The particular isolation of suburbia and the subsequent stress of it. The great grandmother who makes it to nearly 100 but the uncle who doesn't make it to 65.

Varela has a masters in public health and his knowledge of racism and its effects on health is woven throughout this novel. I can't wait for his next work, The People who Report More Stress: Stories.

Was this review helpful?

An absolutely beautiful book about becoming who you are even if you have to go back to who you were to figure some things out first. I love books about people going back to a place they've left long ago. There is something I love about people who have history with one another and getting to examine that history up close after time has passed. I fell in love with the main character and the novel effortlessly glides between zooming in on a person, place, or issue, and also zooming out to show how it all fits together. A book that made me feel, laugh, and cry.

Was this review helpful?

I very much enjoyed this book, even though I wasn't sure I was going to. Thank you for the opportunity to read and review it!

Was this review helpful?

Excellent book about anxiety, racism, public health outcomes, returning home and dreading it, and how we connect with one another and address our past. I loved this so so much!

Was this review helpful?

Readers who liked this book also liked: