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Scribner
June 2013
On Sale: May 21, 2013
256 pages
ISBN: 1476710244
EAN: 9781476710242
Kindle: B008O5FRS8
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction Family Life
Vivid and alive, Cristina Garcรญaโs new novel transports readers to Cuba, to Miami, and into the heads of two larger-than-life menโa fictionalized Fidel Castro and an octogenarian Cuban exile obsessed with seeking revenge against the dictator. In King of Cuba, the National Book Award finalist and author of Dreaming in Cuban, writing at the top of her form with humor and humanity, returns to the territory of her homeland. El Comandante, an aging dictator, shambles about his mansion in Havana, visits a dying friend, tortures hunger strikers in one of his prisons, and grapples with the stale end of his life that is as devoid of grandeur as his nearly sixty-year-old revolution. Across the waters in Florida, Goyo Herrera, a Miami exile in his eighties, plots revenge against his longtime enemyโthe very same El Comandanteโwhom he blames for stealing his beloved, ruining his homeland, and taking his fatherโs life. Herrera would gladly โwear chains on his ankles, chisel stones for his remaining days, even become a goddamn Democrat for the gratification of personally expediting the tyrantโs journey back to the Devil, with whom heโd obviously made a pact.โ With her masterful twinning of El Comandante and Herrera, along with the rabble of other Cuban voices that combine to create a chorus of historyโs unofficial stories, Garcรญa plumbs the passions and realities of these two Cubasโon the island and offโand offers a pulsating story that entertains and illuminates.
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - May 21, 2013
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