Adios Muchachos - Softcover

Chavarria, Daniel; Lopez, Carlos

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1888451165 ISBN 13: 9781888451160

Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd., 2001

Synopsis

Alicia is a smart, confident and gorgeous prostitute in Havana. She is not a street-walker. Rather, she displays her wares on bicycle, seducing men through the irresistible pull of her fine derrière. John King, her new client, is a Canadian businessman with a striking resemblance to movie star Alain Delon. This is no ordinary John” and Alicia's feelings for him grow; she sees in their relationship the possibility of escape from her dead-end life in a Havana plagued with scarcity. When John King’s wealthy and sexually deviant boss is suddenly killed, Alicia and John hatch a get-rich-quick scheme. A web of deception is woven, but just as quickly unraveled disastrously, and only one person is able to say "adiós” to the dilapidated island of Cuba.

Daniel Chavarría was born in Uruguay in 1933. He spent the 1960s involved in several South American liberation struggles. He fled the continent and settled in Havana, Cuba, where he has resided since 1969. From 1975 to 1986, Chavarría worked as a translator of literature into Spanish, and taught Latin, Greek and Classical Literature at the University of Havana. His novels, short stories, literary journalism, and screenplays have reached audiences across Latin America, Europe, and Asia. Chavarría has won numerous literary awards around the world, including a 1992 Dashiell Hammett Award. Adiós Muchachos is his first novel to be translated into English. In 2002, Akashic Books will publish his mystery novel, The Eye of Cybele, set in ancient Greece.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel Chavarría is a Uruguayan writer with two passions: whores and Classical Literature. His novels, short stories, literary journalism, and screenplays have reached audiences across Latin America and Europe. Chavarría has won numerous literary awards around the world, including a 1992 Dashiell Hammett Award. For years, he was a professor of Latin, Greek, and Classical Literature, devoting much of his time and energy to researching the origins and evolution of prostitution. In 2002, Akashic Books will publish an English translation of one of Chavarría's most celebrated novels, The Eye of Cybele, about an illustrious Greek whore in the times of Pericles. Chavarría lives half the year in his native country of Uruguay and the other half in Italy.

From Publishers Weekly

Fun, fast and intelligent, this devilishly charming import gives pulp fiction a good name. Hailed as one of the best Latin writers, Uruguayan-born Chavarr¡a is well known throughout Europe as well as in Latin America. He has won literary prizes around the world, including the 1992 Dashiell Hammett Award; this able translation by Carlos Lopez is the first to bring Chavarr¡a to an English-speaking audience. The story, a madcap caper full of twisted sex, devious schemes and high-rolling hijinks, also showcases Chavarr¡a's considerable scholarly research into prostitution. When Alicia, a crafty, bicycle-riding Havana hooker in present-day Cuba, meets Victor, a convicted bank robber masquerading as an upstanding businessman, they quickly realize each other's mutually nefarious motives and wind up in a business pact that leads to larceny, kidnapping and death. Despite the dark subject matter, the winking delivery provides comic surges as reliably as an amusement park ride. Readers are kept off balance by surprise twists and rolling punches but riveted by the sheer force of curiosity and entertainment. Linguistic and cultural tidbits illuminate the intelligence at work behind the bawdy and raw story, while the narrative reveals the exploitative nature of economic forces at work in Cuba. Lines blur between victim and victimizer as Chavarr¡a reveals a symbiosis in which wealthy foreigners exploit the country's resources (from sunken galleons to beautiful women) and the Cubans in turn exploit foreigners' resources. But Chavarr¡a never loses sight of his goal: to deliver an energetic hustle that will leave readers clamoring for more. (June)Forecast: The campy, vintage-style cover painting featuring Alicia posing provocatively on her bicycle will catch the eye of fans of the pulp genre; a dip between the covers will do the rest.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd.
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1888451165
• ISBN 13: 9781888451160
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 245