Publisher Description

In a unique analysis of Cuban literature inside and outside the country's borders, Eduardo Gonzalez looks closely at the work of three of the most important contemporary Cuban authors to write in the post-1959 diaspora: Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1929-2005), who left Cuba for good in 1965 and established himself in London; Antonio Benitez-Rojo (1931-2005), who settled in the United States; and Leonardo Padura Fuentes (b. 1955), who still lives and writes in Cuba.

Through the positive experiences of exile and wandering that appear in their work, these three writers exhibit what Gonzalez calls "Romantic authorship," a deep connection to the Romantic spirit of irony and complex sublimity crafted in literature by Lord Byron, Thomas De Quincey, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In Gonzalez's view, a writer becomes a belated Romantic by dint of exile adopted creatively with comic or tragic irony. Gonzalez weaves into his analysis related cinematic elements of myth, folktale, and the grotesque that appear in the work of filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock and Pedro Almodovar. Placing the three Cuban writers in conversation with artists and thinkers from British and American literature, anthropology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and cinema, Gonzalez ultimately provides a space in which Cuba and its literature, inside and outside its borders, are deprovincialized.

Flap

In an analysis of Cuban literature inside and outside the country's borders, Eduardo Gonzalez looks closely at the work of three of the most important contemporary Cuban authors to write in the post-1959 diaspora: Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1929@-2005), who left Cuba for good in 1965 and established himself in London; Antonio Benitez-Rojo (1931@-2005), who settled in the United States; and Leonardo Padura Fuentes (b. 1955), who still lives and writes in Cuba. Gonzalez places the three Cuban writers in conversation with artists and thinkers from British and American literature, anthropology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and cinema, highlighting the positive experiences of exile and wandering that appear in their work.

Author Biography

EDUARDO GONZALEZ teaches literature and cinema at The Johns Hopkins University. He is author of three other books, including The Monstered Self: Narratives of Death and Performance in Latin American Fiction.

Review

"A major work of scholarship and reflection by a uniquely talented critic in his prime. Employing an eclectic approach that blends myth criticism and psychoanalysis, Gonzalez, at his best, is nothing short of dazzling." - Gustavo Perez Firmat, Columbia University"

Long Description

In a unique analysis of Cuban literature inside and outside the country's borders, Eduardo Gonzalez looks closely at the work of three of the most important contemporary Cuban authors to write in the post-1959 diaspora: Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1929-2005), who left Cuba for good in 1965 and established himself in London; Antonio Benitez-Rojo (1931-2005), who settled in the United States; and Leonardo Padura Fuentes (b. 1955), who still lives and writes in Cuba.Through the positive experiences of exile and wandering that appear in their work, these three writers exhibit what Gonzalez calls "Romantic authorship," a deep connection to the Romantic spirit of irony and complex sublimity crafted in literature by Lord Byron, Thomas De Quincey, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In Gonzalez's view, a writer becomes a belated Romantic by dint of exile adopted creatively with comic or tragic irony. Gonzalez weaves into his analysis related cinematic elements of myth, folktale, and the grotesque that appear in the work of filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock and Pedro Almodovar. Placing the three Cuban writers in conversation with artists and thinkers from British and American literature, anthropology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and cinema, Gonzalez ultimately provides a space in which Cuba and its literature, inside and outside its borders, are deprovincialized.

Review Quote

"This is undoubtedly a major work by a major critic whose talents are unbounded and whose voice is allowed to roam freely across temporal, geographic and intellectual boundaries to places where analysis of Cuban literature has rarely ventured. It is thus a very important book and one that starts to fill a large chasm in Cuban literary studies."

Promotional "Headline"

"This is undoubtedly a major work by a major critic whose talents are unbounded and whose voice is allowed to roam freely across temporal, geographic and intellectual boundaries to places where analysis of Cuban literature has rarely ventured. It is thus a very important book and one that starts to fill a large chasm in Cuban literary studies."-- Caribbean Studies

Details