Singing from the Well(Cantando en El Pozo) (Pentagonia) - Softcover

Arenas, Reinaldo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014009444X ISBN 13: 9780140094442

Publisher: Penguin, 1988

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

"A vision of a different Cuba . . . an almost mythical, enchanted island . . . With this book, Arenas joins an illustrious group of Cuban writers".

-- THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

From the Back Cover:

A POWERFUL NOVEL OF GROWING UP IN A WORLD WHERE NIGHTMARE HAS BECOME REALITY, AND FANTASY PROVIDES THE ONLY ESCAPE

His mother talks piously of the heaven that awaits the good, and disciplines him with an ox prod. His grandmother burns his treasured 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 childhood besieged by horro -- and a moving defense of liberty and the imagination in a world of barbarity, persecution, and ignorance.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 014009444X
• ISBN 13: 9780140094442
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224