FAREWELL TO THE SEA: A NOVEL OF CUBA

Reinaldo Arenas

ISBN 10: 0670529605 / ISBN 13: 9780670529605

Published by Viking, London, 1986

About this Item

Translated from the Spanish by Andrew Hurley. First impression of the first edition in English. ***Near fine in pale grey boards and black cloth-covered spine with silver titles to spine. Pale grey front and rear free endpapers and pastedowns. Head and tail of spine slightly rubbed. Pages clean. No inscriptions. Spine tight. ***In a near fine colour illustrated dustwrapper that has not been price-clipped, showing original publisher's price of $18.95. Tiny 1mm closed tear to top edge of rear panel of dustwrapper. Dustwrapper bright. 236mm x 162mm. 413 pages including one-page note to the rear listing the chronology of the 'disappearances' of his manuscript. ***'Sixteen years ago, Reinaldo Arenas began writing Farewell to the Sea --- the manuscript was confiscated twice by the Cuban authorities, and twice the author rewrote it from memory. ***In this extraordinary and deeply shocking novel we meet Hector, a disillusioned poet and disenchanted revolutionary, who leaves the dreariness of Havana and retreats with his wife and baby to a small seaside cabin for six days. There they hope to recapture the passion, desire, and carefree spirit that once united them. In a stunning juxtaposition of narrative voices, they each tell their own story. ***Rich in hallucination, myth, and fantasy, Farewell to the Sea is a brilliant apocalyptic vision of today's Cuba, by a writer whom Octavia Paz calls "remarkable".' (Quote from inside front of dustwrapper blurb). ***First impression of the first edition in English, in its original dustwrapper in bright condition. ***For all our books, postage is charged at cost, allowing for packaging: any shipping rates indicated on ABE are an average only: we will reduce the P & P charge where appropriate - please contact us for postal rates for heavier books and sets etc.

Seller Inventory # 4196

Bibliographic Details

• Title: FAREWELL TO THE SEA: A NOVEL OF CUBA
• Publisher: Viking, London
• Publication Date: 1986
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670529605
• ISBN 13: 9780670529605
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition in English
• Printing: First Impression
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • First Editions
  • Literature in Translation

About this title

Synopsis

The broad-based tension between Hector, a disillusioned Cuban poet, disenchanted revolutionary, and closet homosexual, and his wife mirror the harsh reality of life under Castro's rule

Reviews

Twice confiscated by Cuban authorities and rewritten from memory, this extraordinary litany of despairthe story of life in Cuba under Castrois told through the voice of a wife (who remains nameless), then through that of her husband, Hector, a disenchanted revolutionary and poet. Hector, his wife and baby vacation for six days at a small seaside cabin. There, in feverish lyrical outbursts (at times, actual poems) they each lament the loss of the freedom they had barely begun to know in early Castro years, and with its passing the loss of everything elseenthusiasm, rebelliousness and hope. Nothing except terror remains, and as it grows, Hector and his wife's relationship becomes intolerable. Under the domestic idle chatter lie their complete solitudes, a vestige of wilted love, her disgust at the messier aspects of child care, his silent fury and homosexual desire. Not even the sensuality of Hector's brief passionate encounter with the boy in the cabin next door escapes suspicion and terror. "What have they forbidden today?"; "How are we to behave today?"; "What new vital instinct did they condemn today?" are the questions that shriek in Hector's mind as the couple returns to hellish Havana. Nightmarish, at times an impenetrable tangle of myth and dreams, this is a horrifying description of life in Cuba todayand one of the best descriptions to date of life in a Communist country. It is the middle novel in a pentalogue; Viking will eventually publish all five volumes here. Foreign rights: Thomas Colchie Assoc. November
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Arenas, expelled from Cuba in 1980, has written a splenetic indictment of totalitarianism in general and his native country in particular. The novel's first part, an interior monologue, represents the memories and fantasies of a woman on vacation with her husband and infant son. Trapped in a repressive country, saddled with an uncommunicative husband and a child she feels no bond to, she is suicidally obsessed with the idea of escape. The ocean surrounding Cuba is symbolically both her liberator and her jailer. The second part is a series of cantos which provide an explanatory gloss on the phantasmagorical narrative of the first part. The novel is imaginatively conceived, but the hysterical, shrill tone vitiates its power. Lonnie Weatherby, McGill Univ. Lib., Montreal
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.