When his father falls ill, Andrés, a professor of public health, returns home. Reevaluating a rocky marriage in the wake of his husband’s infidelity and with little else to do, he decides to attend his twenty-year high school reunion, where he encounters the long-lost friends of his youth.

Jeremy, Andrés' first love, is now married with two children after having been incarcerated and recovering from addiction. Paul, whom Andrés has long suspected of having killed a man in a homophobic attack, is now an Evangelical minister and father of five. And Simone, Andrés's best friend, is in a psychiatric institution following a diagnosis of schizophrenia. During this brief visit home, Andrés confronts these relationships, the death of his brother, and the many sacrifices their parents made to offer them a better life.

A novel about the essential nature of community in maintaining one’s own health, The Town of Babylon is an intimate portrait of queer, racial, and class identity, a call to reevaluate the ties of societal bonds and the systems in which they are forged.

Alejandro Varela