Heat Islands

• at times I felt tremendous sadness because, very much in the style of Margaret Atwood in 'Oryx and Crake', it describes a dystopian / futuristic / fatalistic scenario that is becoming reality today; perhaps not on the magnitude described, but after the mega-fire in the 5th Region, I felt it captured with perfection the destruction and loss, not only material, but humanitarian.

• A collection of stories threaded together with great delicacy and mastery by author Malu Furche takes us on a journey through different realities. From the relationship of two elderly women with their family to a woman who believes herself to be a saint, all are stories set in neighborhoods of Santiago, Chile, enduring a heatwave that spawns nocturnal life and fires everywhere.

• it has a rhythm and narrative drive that makes it impossible to put down; it forces you to hope for impossible outcomes for its protagonists, prompts you to reflect on the normalization of such a brutal phenomenon as a months-long heatwave, while dragging you into the very same inexplicable abyss of creeping horror that its characters endure. it reminds you of military violence, human indifference, selfishness, and malice, all interwoven into a web of subtle terrors.

• A very engaging book. Easy to read. Fast. Agile. Straight to the bone. A future that doesn't seem so far away. A warning. A climate apocalypse and a reflection of societal unraveling.

• I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of registers Malu displays, from dirty realism through more surreal and dark moments that can be understood as part of Andean gothic, to deeply humorous moments. All of this is anchored in a variety of characters who are very well-crafted in their multiplicity. You can feel the asphyxiation, the heat, the smell of smoke suffusing every single story.

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