In a rugged, mountainous region of an imagined country, an accident occurs at a sinister industrial installation that turns night into day in a flash of irradiating light. The area becomes a militarised zone. Catalan writer Pol Guasch’s debut novel, translated into electrifying English by Mara Faye Lethem, begins 900 days after the incident. The unnamed young narrator is living with his mother and writing letters to his lover, Boris, whose replies we do not get to read. His abusive father has taken his own life, and his mother is in a relationship with one of the shaven-headed uniformed occupiers who speak her language, a different one from the narrator’s.
Napalm in the Heart is written as a mosaic of short pieces in different modes: memoir, letters, poetry, poetic prose, photographs (taken by Boris), which draw on different genres, including science fiction, adventure, horror and romance. These are skilfully composed, cohering into a lucent, compelling narrative that shares a sensibility and atmosphere with one of the greatest Catalan novels, Mercè Rodoreda’s tenebrous beauty Death in Spring.
