Book : Singing From The Well (pentagonia) - Arenas, Reinaldo

-Titulo Original : Singing From The Well (Pentagonia)

-Fabricante :

Penguin Books

-Descripcion Original:

His mother talks piously of the heaven that awaits the good, and disciplines him with an ox prod. His grandmother burns his precious crosses for kindling. His cousins meet to plot their grandfathers death. Yet in the hills surrounding his home, another reality exists, a place where his mother wears flowers in her hair, and his cousin Celestino, a poet who inscribes verse on the trunks of trees, understands his visions. The first novel in Reinaldo Arenass secret history of Cuba, a quintet he called the Pentagonia, Singing from the Well is by turns explosively crude and breathtakingly lyrical. In the end, it is a stunning depiction of a childhood besieged by horror--and a moving defense of liberty and the imagination in a world of barbarity, persecution, and ignorance. From Publishers Weekly A childs strange, grotesque fantasies and visions are the subject of this novel by Cuban writer Arenas, the first in a five-part series that includes Farewell to the Sea. Lacking a story line, chronology and clear delineation of character, this is a book for special tastes, remarked PW. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review A vision of a different Cuba . . . an almost mythical, enchanted island . . . With this book, Arenas joins an illustrious group of Cuban writers. -- THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR From the Back Cover A POWERFUL NOVEL OF GROWING UP IN A WORLD WHERE NIGHTMARE HAS BECOME REALITY, AND FANTASY PROVIDES THE ONLY ESCAPE His mother talks piously of the heaven that awaits the good, and disciplines him with an ox prod. His grandmother burns his treasured crosses for kindling. His cousins meet to plot their grandfathers death. Yet in the hills surrounding his home, another reality exists, a place where his mother wears flowers in her hair, and his cousin Celestino, a poet who inscribes verse on the trunks of trees, understands his visions. The first novel in Reinaldo Arenass secret history of Cuba, a quintet he called the Pentagonia, Singing from the Well is by turns explosively crude and breathtakingly lyrical. In the end, it is a stunning depiction of childhood besieged by horro -- and a moving defense of liberty and the imagination in a world of barbarity, persecution, and ignorance. About the Author Reinaldo Arenas was born in Cuba in 1943. In 1980, he was one of 120,000 Cubans who arrived in the United States on the Mariel boatlift. Arenas settled in New York where he lived until his death from AIDS ten years later. Thomas Colchie is an acclaimed translator, editor, and literary agent for international authors. He is the editor of A Hammock Beneath the Mangoes. He has written for the Village Voice and The Washington Post. His translations include Manuel Puigs Kiss of the Spider Woman and (with Elizabeth Bishop, Gregory Rabassa, and Mark Strand) Carlos Drummond de Andrades Travelling in the Family. Andrew Hurley is a translator of numerous works of literature, criticism, history, and memoir. He is professor emeritus at the University of Puerto Rico. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION In May of 1980, the Cuban dissident poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990) arrived in Key West, Florida, after a harrowing five-day sea voyage on a pleasure craft named the San Lazaro. Having thus completed his own Mariel “exodus” that should have taken no more than seven hours, he expected to be welcomed by the American intellectual community that had hailed his works, published abroad while he was still in Cuba. He did not realize how parsimoniously the title of dissident was meted out to foreign authors (who ever heard of a dissident American author?) by the U.S. intellectual community and its publishers. Throughout the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, “dissident” was a term customarily restricted to certain, and only certain, Soviet and Eastern European authors, the qualifications for which have nev