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Telex from Cuba
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Telex from Cuba Paperback - 2009

by Rachel Kushner

Set in the American community in Cuba during the years leading up to Castro's revolution--a place that was a paradise for a few--Kushner's first novel is a tour de force with the urgency of a telex from a forgotten time and place.


Summary

Rachel Kushner has written an astonishingly wise, ambitious, and riveting novel set in the American community in Cuba during the years leading up to Castro's revolutiona place that was a paradise for a time and for a few. The first novel to tell the story of the Americans who were driven out in 1958, this is a masterful debut.
Young Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites come of age in Oriente Province, where the Americans tend their own fiefdomthree hundred thousand acres of United Fruit Company sugarcane that surround their gated enclave. If the rural tropics are a childs dreamworld, Everly and K.C. nevertheless have keen eyes for the indulgences and betrayals of the grown-ups around themthe mordant drinking and illicit loves, the race hierarchies and violence.

In Havana, a thousand kilometers and a world away from the American colony, a cabaret dancer meets a French agitator named Christian de La Mazire, whose seductive demeanor can't mask his shameful past. Together they become enmeshed in the brewing political underground. When Fidel and Ral Castro lead a revolt from the mountains above the cane plantation, torching the sugar and kidnapping a boat full of yanqui revelers, K.C. and Everly begin to discover the brutality that keeps the colony humming. Though their parents remain blissfully untouched by the forces of history, the children hear the whispers of what is to come.

At the time, urgent news was conveyed by telex. Kushner's first novel is a tour de force, haunting and compelling, with the urgency of a telex from a forgotten time and place.

From the publisher

Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction The debut novel by New York Times bestselling author Rachel Kushner, called "shimmering" (The New Yorker), "multilayered and absorbing" (The New York Times Book Review), and "gorgeously written" (Kirkus Reviews).Young Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites come of age in Oriente Province, where the Americans tend their own fiefdom--three hundred thousand acres of United Fruit Company sugarcane that surround their gated enclave. If the rural tropics are a child's dreamworld, Everly and K.C. nevertheless have keen eyes for the indulgences and betrayals of the grown-ups around them--the mordant drinking and illicit loves, the race hierarchies and violence. In Havana, a thousand kilometers and a world away from the American colony, a cabaret dancer meets a French agitator named Christian de La Mazire, whose seductive demeanor can't mask his shameful past. Together they become enmeshed in the brewing political underground. When Fidel and Ral Castro lead a revolt from the mountains above the cane plantation, torching the sugar and kidnapping a boat full of "yanqui" revelers, K.C. and Everly begin to discover the brutality that keeps the colony humming. Though their parents remain blissfully untouched by the forces of history, the children hear the whispers of what is to come. Kushner's first novel is a tour de force, haunting and compelling, with the urgency of a telex from a forgotten time and place.

Details

  • Title Telex from Cuba
  • Author Rachel Kushner
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Reprint
  • Pages 336
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Scribner Book Company, New York
  • Date 2009-06-02
  • ISBN 9781416561040 / 1416561048
  • Weight 0.62 lbs (0.28 kg)
  • Dimensions 8 x 5.3 x 0.81 in (20.32 x 13.46 x 2.06 cm)
  • Themes
    • Topical: Coming of Age
  • Library of Congress subjects Cuba - History - 1933-1959, Americans - Cuba
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

Media reviews

"Telex From Cuba is a prodigious work, sparking into life throughout its pages, beautifully balanced in its views of plantation society and the revolutionary force that ultimately overthrows it, written without bombast or self-referring language, as if the writer is so intent on the people she portrays, she writes of them with a kind of rare innocence, the innocence of the true observer who submits to the power of the tale she tells." -- Paula Fox, author of The Coldest Winter

Citations

  • New York Times Book Review, 08/23/2009, Page 20

About the author

Rachel Kushner is the author of The Hard Crowd, her acclaimed essay collection, and internationally acclaimed novels The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers, and Telex from Cuba, as well as a book of short stories, The Strange Case of Rachel K. She has won the Prix Mdicis and been a finalist for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was twice a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and the recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her books have been translated into twenty-six languages.
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