Haunting and transcendently twisted, this English-language debut from a Cuban literary star is a tale of race, magic, belief, and fate The Stuart family moves to a marginal neighborhood of Cienfuegos, a city on the southern coast of Cuba. Arturo Stuart, a charismatic, visionary preacher, discovers soon after arriving that God has given him a mission: to build a temple that surpasses any before seen in Cuba, and to make of Cienfuegos a new Jerusalem. 
In a neighborhood 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 neighborhood, 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.

The Black Cathedral: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

GALA, MARCIAL

United States

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

About the Author\nMarcial Gala is a novelist, a poet, and an architect from Cuba. He won the Pinos Nuevos Prize for best short story in 1999. The Black Cathedral received the Critics' Award and the Alejo Carpentier Award in 2012 and was published in English by FSG in 2020. Gala also won the 2018 Ñ Prize of the City of Buenos Aires-Clarín for Call Me Cassandra. He lives in Buenos Aires and Cienfuegos.\nThe daughter of Cuban exiles, Anna Kushner was born in Philadelphia and has been traveling to Cuba since 1999. In addition to The Black Cathedral and Call Me Cassandra, she has translated the novels of Norberto Fuentes, Leonardo Padura, Guillermo Rosales, and Gonçalo M. Tavares, as well as two collections of nonfiction by Mario Vargas Llosa.\n“Dazzling." ―Marcela Valdes, The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)\n"A spellbinding novel by one of the best writers of the Americas." ―Junot Díaz, author of This is How You Lose Her\nTen-year-old Rauli lives in a world that is often hostile. His older brother is violent; his philandering father doesn’t understand him; his intelligence and sensitivity do not endear him to the other children at school. He loves to read, especially Greek myths, but in Cuba in the 1970s, novels and gods can be dangerous. Despite the signs that warn Rauli to repress and fear what he is, he knows three things to be true: First, that he was born in the wrong body. Second, that he will die, aged eighteen, as a soldier in the Cuban intervention in Angola. And third, that he is the reincarnation of the Trojan princess Cassandra.\nMoving between Rauli’s childhood and adolescence, between the Angolan battlefield, the Cuban city of Cienfuegos, and the shores of ancient Troy, Marcial Gala’s Call Me Cassandra tells of the search for identity amid the collapse of Cuba’s utopian dreams. Burdened with knowledge of tragedies yet to come, Rauli nonetheless strives to know himself. Lyrical and gritty, heartbreaking and luminous, Rauli’s is the story of the inexorable pull of destiny.

Call Me Cassandra: A Novel

About the Author\nMarcial Gala is a novelist, a poet, and an architect from Cuba. He won the Pinos Nuevos Prize for best short story in 1999. The Black Cathedral received the Critics' Award and the Alejo Carpentier Award in 2012 and was published in English by FSG in 2020. Gala also won the 2018 Ñ Prize of the City of Buenos Aires-Clarín for Call Me Cassandra. He lives in Buenos Aires and Cienfuegos.\nThe daughter of Cuban exiles, Anna Kushner was born in Philadelphia and has been traveling to Cuba since 1999. In addition to The Black Cathedral and Call Me Cassandra, she has translated the novels of Norberto Fuentes, Leonardo Padura, Guillermo Rosales, and Gonçalo M. Tavares, as well as two collections of nonfiction by Mario Vargas Llosa.\nHaunting and transcendently twisted, this English-language debut from a Cuban literary star is a tale of race, magic, belief, and fate\nThe Stuart family moves to a marginal neighborhood of Cienfuegos, a city on the southern coast of Cuba. Arturo Stuart, a charismatic, visionary preacher, discovers soon after arriving that God has given him a mission: to build a temple that surpasses any before seen in Cuba, and to make of Cienfuegos a new Jerusalem.\nIn a neighborhood 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 neighborhood, the city, and the country, unable to escape the shadow of the unfinished cathedral.\nTold 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.

Black Cathedral

Picador Paper

"Dazzling." --Marcela Valdes, The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) "A spellbinding novel by one of the best writers of the Americas." --Junot Díaz, author of This is How You Lose Her From the author of the award-winning The Black Cathedral, a darkly magical tale of a haunted young dreamer, born in the wrong body and time, who believes himself to be a doomed prophetess from ancient Greek mythology. Ten-year-old Rauli lives in a world that is often hostile. His older brother is violent; his philandering father doesn't understand him; his intelligence and sensitivity do not endear him to the other children at school. He loves to read, especially Greek myths, but in Cuba in the 1970s, novels and gods can be dangerous. Despite the signs that warn Rauli to repress and fear what he is, he knows three things to be true: First, that he was born in the wrong body. Second, that he will die, aged eighteen, as a soldier in the Cuban intervention in Angola. And third, that he is the reincarnation of the Trojan princess Cassandra. Moving between Rauli's childhood and adolescence, between the Angolan battlefield, the Cuban city of Cienfuegos, and the shores of ancient Troy, Marcial Gala's Call Me Cassandra tells of the search for identity amid the collapse of Cuba's utopian dreams. Burdened with knowledge of tragedies yet to come, Rauli nonetheless strives to know himself. Lyrical and gritty, heartbreaking and luminous, Rauli's is the story of the inexorable pull of destiny.

Call Me Cassandra

Picador

Tantor Media, Inc.

Die Kathedrale der Schwarzen

Nagel & Kimche

La Catedral de los Negros (Archipiélago Caribe) (Spanish Edition)

EDICIONES CORREGIDOR | ARGENTINA

Rauli es un niño de diez años que adivina el futuro y se siente una mujer que ha nacido en el cuerpo de un hombre. Una historia de iniciación en la Cuba de los años setenta, durante la guerra de Angola. Rauli tiene diez años y es un ávido lector de literatura clásica. Ha nacido en un cuerpo equivocado y ve el futuro: ya sabe que cuando pasen los años irá a combatir a Angola y que morirá atravesado por balas que destilan homofobia. Ya sabe cómo morirán sus compañeros. Y quisiera llamarse Casandra. Entre la niñez y la adolescencia, la novela narra la búsqueda de una identidad en un contexto hostil que asiste al derrumbe del sueño del hombre nuevo y de la utopía internacionalista. Lírica y costumbrista a la vez, Llámenme Casandra reconstruye la cotidianidad en la Cuba de los años setenta, con una mirada amorosa hacia sus personajes y una gran habilidad para engarzar el mito clásico y los personajes de la guerra de Troya en la trama de la guerra angoleña. Una novela de iniciación y de identidad que atrapa desde las primeras páginas.

LLAMENME CASANDRA

CLARIN ALFAGUA

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Books by GALA, MARCIAL

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The Black Cathedral: A Novel

Call Me Cassandra: A Novel

Black Cathedral

Call Me Cassandra

The Black Cathedral: A Novel

Die Kathedrale der Schwarzen

La Catedral de los Negros (Archipiélago Caribe) (Spanish Edition)

LLAMENME CASANDRA