Exit West meets Normal People in this moving dystopian love story eerily in tune with our times.

At once evocative and propulsive, City in Flames is a love story about two isolated people with a deep yet fragile bond trying to find their way to each other while political disorder engulfs the world around them.

Sara is a graduate student living away from home and struggling to finish her degree. When she kindles a long-distance relationship with Kevin, a disillusioned and apathetic IT worker, the two watch as the city that Kevin lives in, and Sara grew up in, slowly rises up against P., a recently elected populist leader. As protests escalate to a night of devastating fires, the impending political breakdown pushes Sara and Kevin’s relationship to the brink and leaves them torn between the turmoil of the present and a hope for the future, between their longing for connection and their terror of commitment.

City in Flames offers a timely, intimate examination of our political moment, mixing the edge of Exit West and the modern romance of Normal People. It is a story that illuminates how people can grow separated from each other, the ways that these bonds can be healed and re-established, and how humans define themselves through their relationships with others.

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Tomas Hachard is the author of City in Flames. His work has been published in The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Slate, NPR, Guernica Magazine, The LA Review of Books, and Hazlitt, among many others. He was born in Argentina and raised in Toronto, where he currently lives with his partner and son.