CONTENTS
1. SIDEWALKS
2. SUBURBS
3. ITALIAN RESTAURANTS
4. NUNS
5. OPEN BAR
6. HIGH SCHOOL
7. MOM & DAD
8. PARKING LOTS
9. BASEMENTS
10. BAGELS
11. HENRY
12. PEARL JAM
13. THE NEIGHBORHOOD
14. LATE-STAGE CAPITALISM
15. PAUL'S DAD
16. COUPLES COUNSELING
17. FRIDAY NIGHTS
18. SUNDAY MASS
19. COMMUNITY COLLEGE
20. MARTYRDOM
21. THE HOLY SPIRIT
22. SAINT JOSEPH
23. MARGARITAS
24. GETAWAY
ACKNOWL EDGMENTS
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, and more. He is a 2019 Jerome Fellow in Literature and his graduate studies were in public health.
"Unsparing yet big-hearted, The Town of Babylon will delight anyone
who's ever dreaded a school reunion-or believed they'd outgrown a
community. Varela throws open the closet of queer suburban
adolescence with verve, empathy, and insight. A deeply moving
debut."
-Julian Lucas, staff writer, The New Yorker
"In portraying Babylon, the diverse working-class Long Island town
where he grew up, Varela paid attention to the heart disease, drug
abuse, and dwindling economic opportunities that add up to a kind
of communal stress and desperation. But the book, set over a week
following a 20th high school reunion, also features sex and
longing, love for family and friends, and an overarching wry
affection."
-Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe
"A richly textured portrait of ordinary queer life."
-Book Riot
"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
"The Town of Babylon foregrounds the way social differences play
out between white and non-white, non-white and non-white, white and
white. Despite what some of the United States population would like
to believe, differences of race, gender, class, sexuality, religion
cannot be elided, cannot go unseen. Varela's keen attentiveness to
the everyday unraveling of such relations indicates his sensitivity
to the conditions of life as we know it."
-Marcos Gonsalez, Protean Magazine
"[Varela's] precise pacing of [the] pivotal moments make for
storytelling both riveting and poignant... [the novel's] distinct
and intertwining narrative voices justify the rich and pointed
cultural critique of the American suburb."
-Benedict Nguyen, INTO
"A dynamic and resonant debut . . . Hopefully there will be more
books to come from the talented Varela."
-Bay Area Reporter
"Line for vivid line, Alejandro Varela's The Town of Babylon is a
deep breath of fresh air, while idea for incisive idea it is a howl
of righteous rage. Rage at the suburbs, at the past, at a country
whose promises are glibly made and rarely kept, at all the great
and small ways we betray each other and ourselves. But it's also a
novel about love. Love's power, limits, and impossible persistence
in the first and last places we think to look for it. The Town of
Babylon is a remarkable debut from a tremendous new voice."
-Justin Taylor, author of Riding with the Ghost
"In The Town of Babylon, Alejandro Varela, whose educational
background is in public health, combines a social scientist's
powers of observation and analysis with a master writer's ability
to delineate character in rich, absorbing prose. This is a
challenging, fascinating portrait of contemporary America."
-John Clum, New York Journal of Books
"New York-based Latino writer Alejandro Varela weaves together
histories of immigration, economic unease, and the health
complications of racism in America."
-Marcela Rodes, Al Dia
"A gay Latinx man reckons with his past when he returns home for
his 20th high school class reunion in Varela's dazzling debut . . .
an incandescent bildungsroman"
-Starred review, Publisher's Weekly
"Varela's debut novel shimmers with tension, navigating the
personal and political with practiced ease. Treading the waters of
adolescence and adulthood, The Town of Babylon navigates the
complexities of home, queerness, and messy histories with measure
and empathy. Weaving together histories of immigration, economic
unease, and the health complications of racism in America, Varela
troubles ideas of community and shared experience amidst a
polarizing landscape."
-Kaitlynn Cassady, Seminary Co-op Bookstores
"The novel's achievement lies in its simultaneous depth and
expansiveness-its huge ensemble of characters, the precision with
which the landscape and culture of Andres' hometown are
rendered."
-Kirkus Reviews
"Alejandro Varela's The Town of Babylon takes the tedium and
heartbreak of life and renders it in extraordinary ways. I am
astonished by the way Varela captures that difficult liminality:
where love, under certain circumstances, slights as much as it
heals. He gets to the core of all the human pressures of living in
a country where everything-everything-has a price. The Town of
Babylon is haunting, sublime, solemn, and true."
-Robert Jones Jr., author of The New York Times bestselling The
Prophets, finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction
"Alejandro Varela's debut dazzles, astonishes, and grabs hold of
your heart through the very last page. Heartbreak and secrets
abound in this intense, astute meditation on race, family, class,
love, and friendship. Varela's wry humor is the icing on the cake
of this brilliant novel."
-Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies,
finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction
"In Alejandro Varela's assured debut, a man's reluctant return to
his hometown reveals that the past is not as distant as we
sometimes tell ourselves it is. The Town of Babylon is funny and
sexy as well as thoughtful, even heartbreaking. It's an incisive
taxonomy of the American suburb, looking beyond the white picket
fence to tell a different story-what it is to be queer, the child
of immigrants, and a person of color in this country."
-Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind, finalist for the
2020 National Book Award for Fiction
"The Town of Babylon is epic, intimate, hilarious, and
heartrending: an unqualified achievement of the highest degree.
Alejandro Varela captures suburbia's gridlocked travails alongside
the infinitude of the heart, excavating and illuminating questions
of home, family, debt, and happiness. It's as much a love story as
it is a story about love in the world, broaching the impossible
question of whether we can ever really go home again-but Varela
clears it with ease. This book is a queer masterpiece and Varela's
prose is masterful. I didn't want it to end."
-Bryan Washington, award-winning author of Memorial and Lot
"A thoughtful deep dive into a gay Latino man's return to his
working-class town, where his alienation lies in wait. Alejandro
Varela's promising debut is filled with insight about the past that
produced our wounds, and how, despite having answers to lifelong
questions, it holds no redemption. Intimate and jarring."
-Sarah Schulman, author of After Delores and Let the Record
Show
"Alejandro Varela dissects the disease of suburban life in The Town
of Babylon, a finely-crafted literary scalpel with two edges, one
that cuts through the layers of a dying body politic and another
that clears arteries blocking the way to the heart of personal and
political health: community."
-Roberto Lovato, author of Unforgetting
"The Town of Babylon marks the debut of a major talent. Alejandro
Varela puts a new twist on the American contemporary novel dealing
with immigration, identity, race and gender. His scope is wide,
encompassing, and his vision of the 'melting pot' includes a
generous portion of the various kinds of Americans that comprise
the United States . . . The Town of Babylon made me consider
pertinent questions that much contemporary fiction is too timid to
delve into in a compassionate, piercing and unsentimental way.
Varela's marvelous achievement reminds me of the world of John
Updike's Rabbit Run and of the deeply troubled America in Philip
Roth's American Pastoral."
-Jaime Manrique, author of Latin Moon In Manhattan
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