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The Black Cathedral
A Novel
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The Black Cathedral
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
Ideal for readers who appreciate complex characters, multi-voiced narratives, and dark, magical realist fiction set in richly drawn Latin American contexts. Suitable for those interested in contemporary Cuban society and literary explorations of utopia’s decline.
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See moreThe Stuart family moves to a marginal neighbourhood of Cienfuegos, a city on the southern coast of Cuba. Arturo Stuart, a charismatic, visionary preacher, discovers soon after arriving that God has given him a mission: to build a temple that surpasses any before seen in Cuba, and to make of Cienfuegos a new Jerusalem.
Haunting and transcendently twisted, this English-language debut from a Cuban literary star is a tale of race, magic, belief, and fate
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Description
The Stuart family moves to a marginal neighbourhood of Cienfuegos, a city on the southern coast of Cuba. Arturo Stuart, a charismatic, visionary preacher, discovers soon after arriving that God has given him a mission: to build a temple that surpasses any before seen in Cuba, and to make of Cienfuegos a new Jerusalem.
In a neighbourhood that roils with passions and conflicts, at the foot of a cathedral that rises higher day by day, there grows a generation marked by violence, cruelty, and extreme selfishness. This generation will carry these traits beyond the borders of the neighbourhood, the city, and the country, unable to escape the shadow of the unfinished cathedral.
Told by a chorus of narrators—including gossips, gangsters, a ghost, and a serial killer—who flirt, lie, argue, and finish one another's stories, Marcial Gala's The Black Cathedral is a darkly comic indictment of modern Cuba, gritty and realistic but laced with magic. It is a portrait of what remains when dreams of utopia have withered away.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
The New York Times praises the novel's vibrant cast—accidental cannibals, tenderhearted killers, and ghosts—and its innovative narrative, which draws the marginalised voices to the centre of the story. The New Yorker highlights how the varied perspectives create an oral-history feel that thoughtfully explores clashing desires in a small-town setting with humour and depth.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781250785657
Publisher: St Martin's Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 12 January 2021
Country: United States
Imprint: Picador USA
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 17.0mm
Width: 130.0mm
Height: 205.0mm
Weight: 223g
Pages: 224
Collections
About the Author
Marcial Gala was born in Havana in 1965. He is a novelist, a poet, and an architect, and is a member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. He won the Pinos Nuevos Prize for short stories in 1999. The Black Cathedral received the Alejo Carpentier Award for novels in 2012 and the Critics Award in 2012. He lives in Buenos Aires and Cienfuegos. The daughter of Cuban exiles, Anna Kushner was born in Philadelphia and has been traveling to Cuba since 1999. She has translated the novels of Norberto Fuentes, Leonardo Padura, Guillermo Rosales, and Gonçalo M. Tavares, as well as two collections of non-fiction by Mario Vargas Llosa.
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