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A View from the Mangrove
New fiction from the author of Sea of Lentils and The Repeating Island
In this masterful collection of short stories, a celebrated Cuban writer continues his imaginative exploration of the genesis of the modern Caribbean world. Intent on recovering the interior history (la infra-historia) of this astonishingly diverse region, Antonio Benítez-Rojo ranges widely across time and geography. He also experiments with a variety of narrative techniques and prose styles, each intended to capture some unique aspect of the Caribbean's heterogeneous, polyrhythmic cultural heritage. Thus "The Broken Flute" centers on a tragic anthropological reflection; "Windward Passage" on the confessions of a guilty priest stationed in Hispaniola; "Summer Island" on events surrounding the colonization of St. Kitts; and "A View from the Mangrove" on the troubled days of a soldier during Cuba's War of Independence.
The result is historical fiction of the first order, a vivid tapestry of characters and contexts. Whether describing the world through the eyes of a seventeenth-century African slave or an English slave trader, a French buccaneer or a Spanish official, an Aztec god's avatar or a Haitian grand blanc, Benítez-Rojo displays a rare gift for resurrecting the past in all its chaotic and compelling immediacy.
"Benítez-Rojo has an extraordinary talent for sensing the drama of those turning points that have shaped, even determined, Caribbean history. He is a master story-teller, and deserves a place among the best of contemporary Latin American writers."
Adriana Méndez Rodenas, author of Gender and Nationalism Colonial
Cuba: The Travels of Santa Cruz y Montalvo, Condesa de Merlin"The Repeating Island established Benítez-Rojo as the Caribbean's most formidable critic practicing on this continent. Sea of Lentils alongside this new collection shows he is in the first rank of fiction writers."
Fred D'Aguiar, author of Dear Future
Former director of the Center for Caribbean Studies at Casa de las Americas in Cuba, Antonio Benítez-Rojo is the Thomas B. Walton, Jr., Memorial Professor at Amherst College.
James Maraniss is professor of Spanish at Amherst College and author of On Calderón.
Fiction / Caribbean
Literature
256 pp.
LC 97-43469
$40.00s cloth, ISBN 1-55849-136-8
$24.95t paper, ISBN 1-55849-261-5
1998
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