In person at Brookline Booksmith! Celebrate the release of The Town of Babylon with author Alejandro Varela, in conversation with Adam McGee.

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The Town of Babylon: A Novel

"Varela’s debut novel shimmers with tension. . . The Town of Babylon navigates the complexities of home, queerness, and messy histories with measure and empathy." —Kaitlynn Cassady, Seminary Co-op Bookstores

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.

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, and The New Republic, among others. He is a 2019 Jerome Fellow in Literature and his graduate studies were in public health.

Moderator Adam McGee is the Arts Editor and Managing Editor of Boston Review. He has a PhD in Black Studies from Harvard. His writing has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Electric Lit, Poets & Writers, Raleigh Review, Painted Bride, Memorious, Cimarron Review, and Assaracus.