by Pol Guasch
translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem
published 29 October
In a world that is coming to an end, two friends pursue a future worth believing in
When Rita and Líton meet at a party, they quickly form a bond that will indelibly shape their lives. Theirs is not an easy world: 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. Together they navigate the love affairs, setbacks, and thwarted idealism of their twenties, finding in each other a vital reprieve for their disillusionment – that is, until Líton, like other gay men, falls sick.
Unfolding back and forth across time, and told through the voices, conversations, and letters of a tapestry of characters, Paradise Burns is a poetic 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 – hailed as ‘the spokesperson for a generation’ (La Vanguardia) – has written a profoundly moving and astoundingly imaginative paean to the power of friendship: what it protects in a fallen world, and how, through love, it allows us to imagine a better one.
POL GUASCH is the author of two collections of poetry and two novels. His debut novel, Napalm in the Heart, which has been translated into ten languages, won the 2021 Libres Anagrama Novel Prize, making Guasch the youngest winner in the prize's history, and was nominated for the 2025 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction and named one of the best books of 2024 by The New Yorker.