Vivid and alive, Cristina GarcΓaβs new novel transports readers to Cuba, to Miami, and into the heads of two larger-than-life menβa 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 enemyβthe very same El Comandanteβwhom he blames for stealing his beloved, ruining his homeland, and taking his fatherβs life. Herrera would gladly βwear chains on his ankles, chisel stones for his remaining days, even become a goddamn Democrat for the gratification of personally expediting the tyrantβs journey back to the Devil, with whom heβd obviously made a pact.β
With her masterful twinning of El Comandante and Herrera, along with the rabble of other Cuban voices that combine to create a chorus of historyβs unofficial stories, GarcΓa plumbs the passions and realities of these two Cubasβon the island and offβand offers a pulsating story that entertains and illuminates.
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