Oscar Mandinga, great-grandchild of the founders of a small hamlet deep in the Cuban hinterland, is a sardonic teller of tales – some taller than others. But one day Oscar wakes to find himself utterly alone, the sole descendant of his family line. He is not sure what to do or where to go, but in the midst of this uncertainty, he holds fast to what his grandfather always told him: 'No man knows who he is until he knows his past.' So Oscar sets out to find his ancestral village and the meaning of the magical pig's-foot amulet he has inherited.
"A composer, fleeing an empty existence in New York City, takes a journey with his mistress to one of the few remaining areas of the world not yet touched by civilization the upper reaches of a great South American river." -- Back cover.
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... continue