With the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, the ongoing uncertainty surrounding Cuba's political future, the onslaught of tourists, and the economic upheavals in their society, Cubans face an important, perhaps epochal, moment of cultural change. It is a moment amply and complexly reflected in the fiction collected here, twelve short stories written in Cuba during the past ten years and published in English for the first time with the collaboration of some of today's finest translators. An eclectic selection, the stories offer an exhilarating sense of a rich literary diversity and cultural history, an experience of Cuban literature that has rarely been available to an English audience. They differ widely, even wildly, in style and theme: from an impromptu encounter with Ernest Hemingway to an imagined romance mapped onto Cuba's foundational nineteenth-century novel; from a witty, Borgesian satire on bureaucracy and officialist identity to a gothic adventure in homosexual voyeurism and mental illness; from an allegorical travelogue set in repressive China to a semi-surreal celebration of angels in Havana. These are the voices of Cuban fiction today, reflecting the past, anticipating the future, and composing in their infinite variety the stories of their culture.

Contents:                 

Landscape of clay / Alejandro Aguilar — translated by Andrew Hurley ; A maniac in the bathroom / Ena Lucía Portela — translated by Cindy Schuster ; You know my name / Eduardo del Llano — translated by Cola Franzen ; Finca Vigía / Alberto Guerra Naranjo — translated by Peter Bush and Anne McLean ; Puerta de Alcalá / Leonardo Padura Fuentes — translated by Claudia Lightfoot ; Journey to China / C.A. Aguilera — translated by Douglas Edward LaPrade ; You don't have to reach heaven / Francisco García González — translated by Mary G. Berg ; Aunt Enma / Aida Bahr — translated by Dick Cluster ; The horizon / Abilio Estévez — translated by Víctor Rodríguez Núñez and Katherine Hedeen ; The house, Serrat, cinema, and-- do narrators still dream about prose poets? / Ernesto René Rodríguez — translated by Jacqueline Loss ; Gerona / Soleida Ríos — translated by Barbara Jamison ; The girl who doesn't smoke on Saturdays / Anna Lidia Vega Serova — translated by Alexandra Blair.