[In the following favorable review, Skinner discusses the structure of Cobra.]

Sarduy has participated in several influential literary journals: Lunes de revolución in Cuba and after his move to Paris in 1960, Mundo nuevo and Tel quel. His previous novels, Gestos (1963) and De donde son los cantantes (1967) have earned him recognition in Europe and in Latin America as an important figure in contemporary narrative. To an original sensitivity for the baroque style of his Cuban mentor Lezama Lima, Sarduy has amalgamated the linguistic concerns of the Tel quel group. The result is a unique fiction, rich in surface texture and detail, that eschews traditional narrative content in order to focus upon the process of communication. Since language is both producer and product of culture, this emphasis leads to an objectification of the very supports of culture.

Cobra definitely represents Sarduy's most ambitious endeavor in this direction. Whereas De donde son los cantantes reveals the tripartite underpinning of Cuban culture (Chinese, African, Spanish), his latest novel achieves a global scope, comprising a dialog between contemporary Oriental and Occidental cultures. In 1970, Sarduy indicated to Jean Michel Fossey that his novel in progress would present two European interpretations of India. Both versions arise from a reductive process that falsifies otherness, in this case Indian culture. The first view is exemplified by the "Drugstore," where otherness is reduced to picturesque detail. For example, a poster intending to portray the goddess Parvati reveals only a superficial retouching of a Madonna by Murillo. The second view, that of the "Bookstore," decodifies the texts of Indian religion and translates them into the vocabulary of Christian mysticism. Both perspectives originate from a concept of the medium, visual or linguistic representation, as an inert practical instrument for the communication of information. This produces on the level of culture, an ethnocentrism that falsifies otherness, self, and is inconsistent with contemporary European epistemology.

For Sarduy, as expressed in an interview with Roberto González Echevarría in 1972, the contemporary period is characterized by the topology of the empty center and its analog in the physical world: the theory of the expanding universe. The textuality appropriate to this theory would consist of "pulverizations" moving away from a "center" that no longer exists. The latter can only be recovered through a "radical" reading of the "pulverizations" back toward the empty center. Cobra definitely requires such a reading.

The novel consists of two parts. "Cobra I" introduces the protagonist, a transvestite in La Señora's Lyric Puppet Theater, who is obsessed with the perfection of his body. La Señora willingly sacrifices everything in order that the next spectacle, La Féerie orientale, please the public. They both travel to Tangier, where Dr. Ktazob effects the final transformation of Cobra's body. "Cobra II" narrates the protagonist's initiation, death, and funeral in Amsterdam. A gang of four youths, that trafficks both in drugs and Oriental mysticism, conducts the rituals. This part concludes with a pilgrimage to an Oriental temple for the celebration of the vernal solstice. These basic narrative units, "Cobra I" and "Cobra II," parody the two European views of India: "Drugstore" and "Bookstore," respectively.

However, a third view, although not present as a narrative unit, is suggested by the novel. The structure of the narrative seems to lack a hierarchical organization: episodes are narrated and then negated in order to be re-narrated, scenes and characters from this work and from other works appear and disappear, commenting upon this text and being commented upon by it. These techniques tend to recreate the experience of a continual process of emanation and dissolution of forms, of composition and decomposition of the text. This third perspective, hopefully the result of a "radical" reading, reveals simultaneously the Indian reality of my and the text's matrix of the empty center.