The Dance and the Fire

Old flames, wildfires and even wilder dances as three childhood friends reunite in the city they grew up in.

In a gripping new novel by acclaimed Mexican writer Daniel Saldaña París, three friends forever bound by erotic flames of the past reunite in a city engulfed by wildfires and an ecstatic dancing plague.

After years apart, three high school friends return to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where an intense love triangle left an indelible mark on their adolescence. The city, claustrophobic as wildfires press closer, reawakens the past and confronts them with their present: the entanglement of friendship and desire, the seemingly distant discovery of sexuality, complex parental relationships, and the daunting task of artistic fulfilment.

In the background, forces of chaos and destruction are a constant presence. As fires ravage the physical landscape, one of the friends begins choreographing an ecstatic dance inspired by the German Expressionist Mary Wigman and medieval Danse Macabre. What starts as a coping mechanism for the anxieties of disappearing youth and climate catastrophe becomes an overpowering, all-consuming hysteria. Mysterious powers are awakened, the boundary between reality and myth begins to blur, and the friends find themselves immersed in an increasingly turbulent and uncertain universe.

Contributor: Christina MacSweeney (Translated by)

Translator: Christina MacSweeney

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