From Publishers Weekly
With the success of Julian Schnabel's art-house movie Before Night Falls, based on the autobiography of Arenas and starring Spanish actor Javier Bardem, Arenas has begun to solidify his place in the Latin American canon. Almost unknown when he killed himself in 1990 (Jaime Manrique noted in the Village Voice that fewer than a dozen people attended Arena's funeral), Arenas is now recognized as one of Cuba's most furious and unconventional novelists, an accomplishment that is especially stunning when one learns that Arenas was an autodidact who carved his first poems into the trunks of trees. Arenas was born in the Cuban countryside in 1943, and as a teenager he supported Castro's revolution. But later on, his opposition to government policies and his status as a homosexual marked him as a "social danger" and a "counterrevolutionary"Ain the '70s, he was arrested and spent two years in El Morro prison. In 1980, he escaped the island and moved to the United States. At his death, Arenas left behind an impressive body of work: seven novels, a book of essays, an autobiography, and scores of poems. The Spanish publisher Tusquets has set out to republish all of Arenas's works, many of which are still difficult to find. In addition to Antes que anochezca, Arenas's moving autobiography, which he completed in New York City just days before he died, the publisher is now reprinting El palacio de las blanqu!simas mofetas, the third installment of Arenas's quintet of novels about Cuban history. Tusquets has already published the first two parts: El color del verano (The Color of Summer) and Celestino antes del alba (Celestino Before Dawn). Set in the time of Batista's dictatorship, El palacio follows the adventures of Fortunato, a young man who escapes the limitations of country life, and a series of failed romances, by joining the rebel army that threatens to overthrow Batista. These books will be of interest to all public and academic libraries and bookstores of all sizes. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The second novel in the Pentagonia, this is a phantasmagoric novel of adolescent rebellion and political revolution.

"A beautiful, heartfelt book by a passionate and epic writer at the height of his powers." --Oscar Hijuelos

Reinaldo Arenas was born in Cuba in 1943. In 1980, he was one of 120,000 Cubans who arrived in the U.S. on the Mariel boatlift. Arenas settled in New York where he lived until his death, from AIDS, ten years later.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Arenas's ( Singing from the Well ) stunning novel, set during the Cuban revolution, begins with the ominous figure of Death sitting in the yard of an impoverished rural family, spinning a bicycle wheel. In the course of the novel, God will make an appearance, as do familial ghosts, their presences in this stylistically rich, surrealistic narrative as important as those of any of the living participants. The life and death of young Fortunato, who joins the rebels and is tortured and executed by government forces, is told by a cacophony of voices, including those of his eccentric aunt, tyrannical grandfather, mischievous cousins and his own often anguished self. Fortunato, we learn, was raised almost as an orphan: his mother emigrated to North America; his father was unknown. His childhood, spent on a farm in the hill country, is not idyllic but far more pleasant than the nightmarish existence he leads when his grandparents move to town in order to sell fruit and vegetables to employees of a guava-paste factory. This venture is a disaster and the family sinks into even deeper poverty. As he enters his teens, Fortunato feels compelled to prove his masculinity via alcohol and women, and he earns a reputation as being half-crazed. His infatuation with the rebel cause and the price he pays for it are hauntingly described, bringing this explosive period in recent history uncomfortably close to the American reader. (Dec.)

Library Journal

This semi-autobiographical tale by an author expelled from Cuba a decade ago takes up where Singing in the Well ( LJ 7/87) left off. Fortunato, now an adolescent living in a household of loud and vexatious women, moves with them from the country to the drab and unhistorical city of Holguin, where they set up a sugarcane press, spar with each other in frustration, and stink of rotten fruit. City life, he reasons, will be tough, because cities are what turned his girl cousins into prostitutes. Things get so bad (God is addressed as ``you old faggot'') that the family tries to forget its private hell by adopting the hell that is ``for everyone alike.'' When Fortunato joins the rebels in 1958, the quality of his life does not improve. Arenas's unconventional narrative impressively combines dialog, mini-plays, advertisements, and newspaper reports into a lyrical and harmonious portrait of hardship and despair in Batista's Cuba.--Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cum berland, Md.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING