Napalm in the Heart

Gausch makes his English-language debut with this starkly beautiful postapocalyptic novel. The narrator ekes out an existence with his ailing mother, who used to work at a malevolent place called the Factory and is now “devoid of hope,” in their wilderness refuge, where armed men hunt wild boars and police one another’s movements. As a way to combat the ever-present “muteness of the dead,” the narrator writes letters to his beloved, a photographer named Boris, confessing his feelings for Boris and expressing his distaste for their paramilitary society. After the narrator attacks another man out of fear for his own life, he flees, leaving behind his mother and reuniting with Boris. Together they join the ranks of survivors in makeshift settlements and attempt to evade an insurgent army that regularly carries out disappearances and interrogations. The fractured narrative, which unfolds like a series of prose poems, is intercut with Boris’s abstract photographs, offering a record of their exodus and adding to the jagged testament to queer love. This is arresting. (Aug.)