The Dance and the Fire

In a gripping, atmospheric new novel by acclaimed Mexican writer Daniel Saldana Paris, 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 once left an indelible mark on their adolescence. The city, surrounded by a ring of claustrophobic wildfires, brings out the past and confronts them with their present: they must once again face the entanglement of friendship and desire, the seemingly distant discovery of sexuality, complex parental relationships, and the daunting task of artistic fulfillment.

In the background, two 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 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.