King of Cuba
A Novel
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4.2 • 6 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A “darkly hilarious” (Elle) novel about a fictionalized Fidel Castro and an octogenarian Cuban exile obsessed with seeking revenge by the National Book Award finalist Cristina García, this “clever, well-conceived dual portrait shows what connects and divides Cubans inside and outside of the island” (Kirkus Reviews).
Vivid and teeming with life, King of Cuba transports readers to Cuba and Miami, and into the heads of two larger-than-life men: a fictionalized Fidel Castro and an octogenarian Cuban exile obsessed with seeking revenge against the dictator. García’s masterful twinning of these characters combines with a rabble of other Cuban voices to portray the passions and realities of two Cubas—on the island and off— in a pulsating story that entertains and illuminates.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her fun new novel, Garcia (Dreaming in Cuban) explores the hatred Goyo Herrera, an expatriate geriatric Cuban, harbors toward his arch enemy El Comandante, a contemporary who still wields formidable power in their homeland. El Comandante reminisces about the bygone days of revolutionary glory while expressing disgust for the current state of Cuba. In contrast, the widower Goyo lives in Miami with his daughter and takes phone calls from his depressed son, a man of almost 60 with a brain "irremediably fried by cocaine," meanwhile concocting revenge schemes against his nemesis. Goyo doesn't realize El Comandante also reels from the effects of aging, enduring denture pain and suffering other indignities in effort to make himself appear robust for a television appearance. For both men, Cuba has become legendary in its own way. El Comandante contemplates what he considers victories while Goyo remembers a land that has faded in his memory "perhaps Cuba had become nothing but an imaginary place unrelated to any truth." Interspersed with short narratives by Cubans from various walks of life, Garcia's writing is laced with candor and wit as she portrays the lives of two men united by the past.
