In a neighbourhood that roils with passions and conflicts, at the foot of a cathedral that rises higher day by day, there grows a generation marked by violence, cruelty, and extreme selfishness. This generation will carry these traits beyond the borders of the neighbourhood, the city, and the country, unable to escape the shadow of the unfinished cathedral. Told by a chorus of narrators - including gossips, gangsters, a ghost, and a serial killer - who flirt, lie, argue, and finish one another's stories, Marcial Gala's The Black Cathedral is a darkly comic indictment of modern Cuba, gritty and realistic but laced with magic. It is a portrait of what remains when dreams of utopia have withered away.

Haunting and transcendently twisted, this English-language debut from a Cuban literary star is a tale of race, magic, belief, and fate

About the Author
Marcial Gala was born in Havana in 1965. He is a novelist, a poet, and an architect, and is a member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. He won the Pinos Nuevos Prize for short stories in 1999. The Black Cathedral received the Alejo Carpentier Award for novels in 2012 and the Critics Award in 2012. He lives in Buenos Aires and Cienfuegos. The daughter of Cuban exiles, Anna Kushner was born in Philadelphia and has been traveling to Cuba since 1999. She has translated the novels of Norberto Fuentes, Leonardo Padura, Guillermo Rosales, and Goncalo M. Tavares, as well as two collections of non-fiction by Mario Vargas Llosa.


Book Information
ISBN 9781250785657
Author Marcial Gala
Format Paperback
Page Count 224
Imprint Picador USA
Publisher St Martin's Press
Weight(grams) 219g
Dimensions(mm) 201mm * 125mm * 17mm