City in Flames

by Tomas Hachard

Flying Books

City in Flames

by Tomas Hachard

Flying Books

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.

Get the Book

This book may also be available at the TIFA Festival Bookstore.

Tomas Hachard is the author of City in Flames. One of CBC's Writers to Watch in 2023, his work has been published in The Atlantic, the Guardian, the Globe and Mail, Slate, NPR, Hazlitt and the Literary Review of Canada, among others. He lives in Toronto with his family.

Read more about Tomas Hachard

To top