Kirkus Reviews (starred review) ✺s in The Black Cathedral, Cuban writer Gala sets his newest work of magical realism in his hometown of Cienfuegos. Publishers Weekly ✺ haunting meditation on identity and violence.« In the end, the author offers a singular invocation of immortality.« Gala’s prose, elegantly translated by Kushner, perfectly conveys the protagonist’s dual realities (“We are but shadows set on the canvas of this life, my Zeus,” he thinks, while on the battlefield). Marcela Valdes, The New York Times Book Review »Lyrical and elegiac.

The story slaloms through past, present and future, braiding together moments from Raúl’s childhood in Cuba and his military service in Angola.« Gala constructs sentences and scenes that swing easily from the mythological to the mundane, and Anna Kushner’s translation does a wonderful job of capturing his tones - and his temporal shifts. Deftly pushing the boundaries of both realism and first-person perspective. It is an abundant picture, both fatalistic and magical, in which an exuberant language unfolds.«Ĭorriere della Sera ✺ novel in which the power of imagination is able to break through the bars of the view of others, and create a voice with the power to tell its own story.«

✼uban-born Marcial Gala’s second novel is set in both the Caribbean and Africa, on earth and in the sky, virtuously blending the different spaces.

Call me cassandra marcial gala