The Tower of the Antilles
Short Stories
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- CHF 12.00
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- CHF 12.00
Beschreibung des Verlags
PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist: A “superb story collection” about America and Cuba, escape and return, and history and hope (Los Angeles Times).
Longlisted for The Story Prize
One of Electric Literature’s Best Short Story Collections of the Year
In “Superman,” several possible story lines emerge about a 1950s Havana sex-show superstar who disappeared as soon as the revolution triumphed. “North/South” portrays a migrant family trying to cope with separation and the eventual disintegration of blood ties. “The Cola of Oblivion” follows a young woman who returns to Cuba and inadvertently uncorks a history of accommodation and betrayal among the family members who stayed behind during the revolution. And in the title story, an interrogation reveals a series of fantasies about escape and a history of futility.
The Cubans in Achy Obejas’ story collection are haunted by islands: the island they fled, the island they’ve created, the island they were taken to or forced from, the island they long for, the island they return to, and the island that can never be home again.
“[A] memorable short fiction collection.” —Publishers Weekly
“By turns searing and subtly magical . . . Obejas’ plots are ambushing, her characters startling, her metaphors fresh, her humor caustic, and her compassion potent in these intricate and haunting stories of displacement, loss, stoicism, and realization.” —Booklist
“Obejas writes with gentleness, without flashy wording or gimmicks, about people trying to figure out where they belong.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Questions of personal and national identity percolate through the stories in Obejas's (Ruins) memorable short fiction collection, most of which is set in Cuba, the author's birthplace. In "The Cola of Oblivion," a family of Cuban nationals try to cajole the American daughter of a counterrevolutionary relative into a contrived scheme to help them emigrate by claiming her family has a moral obligation to them. "Superm n" is the tale of a Cuban sex worker whose unbridled libido is equated with the freewheeling spirit of the prerevolutionary nation. The narrator of "The Maldives," who grew up in overcrowded familial living arrangements in Cuba, decides to move to an underpopulated location when she is diagnosed with a brain tumor that will eventually "leave me trapped in my own body." Some of the stories are more collections of impressions than straightforward narratives, but all are distinguished by the author's skill at fixing their moments in piquant imagery: for example, a character in "Waters" says of her acclimation to the simmering climate of Cuba, "I am as comfortable in this state of humidity, as at home in it as if I were in amniotic fluid." These 10 stories show Obejas's talent, illuminating Cuban culture and the innermost lives of her characters.
