Reinaldo Arenas Book order

Reinaldo Arenas, a prominent Cuban writer of the 20th century, faced severe repression, including imprisonment from 1974 to 1976, before fleeing to New York in 1980. His literary contributions earned him prestigious awards, including the Cintas and Guggenheim fellowships, and recognition as the best foreign novelist in France in 1969. Struggling with illness and despair over Cuba's situation, he tragically ended his life in 1990, leaving a poignant letter detailing his reasons, particularly his inability to continue fighting for freedom.

Mona and Other Tales covers Reinaldo Arenas's entire his recently rediscovered debut (which got him a job at the Biblioteca Nacional in Havana), stories written in a political prison, and some of his last works, written in exile. Many of the stories have not previously appeared in English.Here is the tender story of a boy who recognizes evil for the first time and decides to ignore it; the tale of a writer struggling between the demands of creativity and of fame; common people dealing with changes brought about by revolution and exile; a romp with a famous, dangerous woman in the Metropolitan Museum; an outrageous fantasy that picks up where Garcia Lorca's famous play The House of Bernardo Alba ends. Told with Arenas's famous wit and humanity, Mona makes a perfect introduction to this important writer.Translated from the Spanish by Dolores Koch.

The Cuban-born novelist describes his poverty-stricken childhood in rural Cuba, his adolescence as a rebel fighting for Castro, his suppression as a writer, his imprisonment for his homosexuality, and his flight from Cuba

His mother talks piously of the heaven that awaits the good, and disciplines him with an ox prod. His grandmother burns his precious crosses for kindling. His cousins meet to plot their grandfather's death. Yet in the hills surrounding his home, another reality exists, a place where his mother wears flowers in her hair, and his cousin Celestino, a poet who inscribes verse on the trunks of trees, understands his visions. The first novel in Reinaldo Arenas's "secret history of Cuba," a quintet he called the Pentagonia, Singing from the Well is by turns explosively crude and breathtakingly lyrical. In the end, it is a stunning depiction of a childhood besieged by horror--and a moving defense of liberty and the imagination in a world of barbarity, persecution, and ignorance.

"...a passionate indictment of tyranny." --  The New YorkerTwice confiscated by Cuban authorities and rewritten from memory, this is Arenas' most celebrated novel In this brilliant, apocalyptic vision of Castro's Cuba, we meet a young couple who leave the dreariness of Havana and spend six days at a small seaside retreat, where they hope to recapture the desire and carefree spirit that once united them. In a stunning juxtaposition of narrative voices, the wife recounts the grim reality of her marriage, the demands of motherhood, and her loss of freedom, innocence, and hope; while her husband, a disillusioned poet and disenchanted revolutionary, recalls his political struggles and laments the artistic and homosexual freedom that has been denied him. Rich in hallucination, myth and fantasy, Farewell to the Sea is a fierce and unforgettable work that speaks for the entire human condition.