The crisp tension in this daring collection of short stories—with both the original Spanish and flawless English renditions—reveals a darker side of Cuban reality. One woman wakes up to find an unknown man fast asleep by her side. Another has misplaced her child, and doesn't know what to tell the police. A third has killed her racist and controlling father—or hasn't she, after all? A teenager at the beach—going, going, gone; a preteen suddenly abandoned with an unknown great-grandmother on the edge of nowhere; a professor who sees "the eye of the tiger" wherever she looks; a married woman who sees someone else in the mirror, someone playing an entirely different game. Ophelias is about women pushed to the edge of madness. These eight stories could happen anywhere—and they could happen only in Cuba.

Edited by Sara E. Cooper.