From Cuba with a Song (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Severo Sarduy
- First Published: 1967
- Type of Plot: Comic narrative experimentation
- Time of Work: Undefined
- Setting: A simulated Cuba: Havana’s Chinatown, Camagüey, and Santiago de Cuba
- Principal Characters: Help, Mercy, The Great Bald Madame, Lotus Flower, The General (Mortal Pérez), Dolores Rondón, Christ
- Genres: Long fiction, Antistory, Metafiction
- Subjects: 1950’s, Language or languages, Philosophy or philosophers, Symbolism, Cuba or Cubans, Existentialism
- Locales: Cuba
The Novel
From Cuba with a Song is not a novel in the traditional sense; rather, Sarduy’s second work of fiction breaks down the founding conventions of novelistic genre: character, plot, and theme. The innovative thrust of From Cuba with a Song lies in its radical alteration of traditional plot. Instead of telling a story in linear fashion, From Cuba with a Song reads like a verbal jigsaw puzzle composed of three pieces or narrative sequences attached to a “head”—the introductory “Curriculum cubense.”
This first section traces a drawing...
[The entire page is 2232 words long]
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