Napalm in the Heart

In the near future, something disastrous has occured. Society has been militarized, families uprooted, the dead lie unburied, tanks linger, thugs patrol the land and books are destroyed. The geography is ambiguous; the atmostphere is repressive.

An unnamed young man survives in the forest with his mother and observes the strange violence. Nature itself is unsettling; bees 'can burst open like bullets from so much pollen'. Through epistolary missives to Boris-the man with whom he shares an illicit and forbidden desire-he searches for a way to escape and a way to live. Meanwhile, a recurring vision of crosses reveals the days that have passed since the devastation. In order to transcend the trapped world, a furtive journey must be made, but it risks causing the line between victim and perpetrator to blur.

Poetic and apocalyptic-and a novel that reads like postcards from the future-Napalm in the Heart is work of unrelenting power and terrible beauty. It unearths what it means to escape, search and survive... and the possibility of recreating another world with language and words.