Limited Capacity
Set in a world almost identical to our own, this novel imagines a legal principle that reshapes society from its foundations: no child may be born unless another person agrees to die in their place. This act of substitution—known as the relay, the passing on of life—is introduced not as catastrophe but as policy, administered through contracts and waiting lists.
Life continues, orderly and familiar, at a cost that is quietly devastating. For those without elderly relatives willing to offer their relay, the chance to have a child can be deferred indefinitely while the government is forced to practice mandatory abortions if a relay is not set in place before birth. A black market emerges where the desperate and marginalized sell their relay to settle debts or leave something behind for their heirs. The justice system, too, is altered, forced to contend with a world in which death can be reassigned and even commissioned.
At the center of this disturbing landscape, Laura Gost’s novel follows one couple pursuing a child and the fragile emotional distance the relay system inserts between them. Parenthood is no longer a purely personal decision, but a negotiation with death. Through their complex inner lives, the book explores parenthood in the twenty-first century, overpopulation, love and friendship, and the moral grays of empathy and selfishness. Written with exquisite subtlety and thrilling tension at times, Limited Capacity is a painfully vivid work of rare beauty.
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CATALAN | Proa
