Napalm in the Heart

The arrival of a blistering debut voice in international literature, and a radical work of literary fiction-poetic, provocative, artful and singular.

In a deserted village, an unnamed young man waits for an opportunity to escape. Society has been militarised, the dead lie unburied and thugs patrol the land. As he waits, he marks the days that pass and writes to his lover.

In a series of impassioned dispatches, Napalm in the Heart unearths what it means to survive when language and nature fail, to refuse to give up when everything is lost.

About the Author

Pol Guasch is a Catalan poet and writer. His debut novel Napalm in the Heart was the winner of the 2021 Llibres Anagrama Prize and has been translated into several languages as well as being adapted for theatre and film. Guasch was awarded 42nd Revelation Award and the Eñe Festival Talent Award for his first novel.

About the Translator

Mara Faye Lethem is a writer and translator from Catalan and Spanish. She has lived and worked in both New York and Barcelona, and has translated the likes of Alicia Kopf, Alana S. Portero and Irene Solà. She has won numerous awards, including the Nota Bene Prize.

Reviews

"Pol Guasch creates an atmosphere that is menacing and powerfully dramatic, but he is also a poet who is interested in image and tone, in texture and rhythmic variation. This mixture gives his innovative and original novel a mesmeric force, wonderfully captured in this translation." —Colm Tóibín

"Pol Guasch has written a punk novel that quotes Iggy Pop's 'heart full of napalm', but there is no rock here and no animal roaming the streets. We instead find ourselves in a mysterious world of the future – or of the past. A world of desire and survival, in the aftermath of an apocalypse marked by different languages, obscure repression, and prose as mysterious as it is beautiful." —Mariana Enríquez

"Pol Guasch has crafted in his novel a struggle for existence that still never gives up on his characters' dreams. Napalm in the Heart challenges the boundaries between delicacy and brutality, creating an unforgettable novel in the process." —Alejandro Zambra

"An extraordinarily beautiful depiction of an extraordinarily ugly-and wholly credible-world in the making." ―Kirkus (starred review)

"Napalm in the Heart is, at its heart, a poet's novel – for better, not for worse. Brimming with energy, what buoys it are clever ideas and some beautiful turns of phrase, deftly translated from the Catalan by Maya Faye Lethem." —Daily Telegraph

Dimensions: 14.4 x 2.7 x 22.3 cm