Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada: A Novel of Cuba

by Zoï Valdïs, Sabina Cienfuegos (Translator)

Overview

Now back in print, the debut novel that made Zoé Valdés an international literary sensation, the bold, bawdy story of a failed revolution and its discontents.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611459333
Publisher:	Arcade
Publication date:	01/02/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	172
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Zoé Valdés was born in Cuba in 1959 and has lived in exile in France since 1995. Once dubbed "the Madonna of Cuban literature," she is the acclaimed author of several novels, including Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada and I Gave You All I Had, both published by Arcade. Besides being awarded the 2013 Azorín Prize for The Weeping Woman, she has won the Planeta Prize and the Premio de Novela Ciudad de Torrevieja. She received the Tres Llaves (Three Keys) to the city of Miami in 2001. She lives in Paris.

What People are Saying About This

Oscar Hijuelos

Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada is a refreshingly frank and uncompromising novel about a vivacious young woman coping with chaos, love, and the ups and downs of revolutionary life in Cuba. Entertaining and lusty, it evokes political stereotypes: there is no pro-Castro or anti-Castro agenda here, only the agenda of the self -- and the glorious "self" at that. Zoe Valdez is a real writer who shocks her readers that Celine once did.

Editorial Reviews

“A sexually forthright and amusing contemporary Candide.”

From the Publisher

“A bawdy, erotic, and existential novel . . . Literate and funny, poignant and realistic . . . glows with life and energy.”

Washington Times

“Zoé Valdés . . . thrills and shocks her readers the way Céline once did. . . . Entertaining and lusty.”

Oscar Hijeulos

"A knockout."

Miami Herald

"There are those who maintain that people throw themselves into the sea over insignificant economic deprivations," writes Valdes of young Cubans desperate enough to raft their way off the island, "but anyone who says that simply doesn't know Cuba, doesn't know the hunger and the terror the Cuban people have known." Already published in Germany, Spain and France, this brief first novel exposes the longing and suffering of Cuban society through the life of a woman named Patria, or Yocandra as she renames herself. Born during the 1959 revolution, Yocandra grows up in the gap between the promises of justice and reform and the reality of frustration and apathy. In this country where happiness means that the electricity works occasionally or a pizza with a cheese substitute from China is available for purchase, Yocandra tries to satisfy her burning thirst for life through writing and passionate sex with a series of lovers. Exuberant and uninhibited, Yocandra brims with acerbic insight, philosophy and eroticism. Her exhausting, painful unfulfillment pervades the author's prose. ("Is this a garden or a cemetery? I want a garden. I need a garden. How proud I am to be Cuban! How terrified I am to be Cuban!") Not a comfortable read, this tale seeks to tell the truth about the state of Cuba's soul, searing like skin under the hot Cuban sun. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This highly erotic, seemingly autobiographical novel by Cuban writer Valds describes narrator Yocandra's series of relationships with allegorical charactersfraudulent writer Traitor, filmmaker Nihilist, aesthete Lynx, and the best friend Gusana ("worm"), a pejorative term for nonpatriots. As a wry, if not outright humorous, indictment of Castro's Cuba (the Nada, or "nothing," of the title), this portrayal of the bleak reality of quotidian life in his regime is offset by occasional intertextual references (Lezama Lima comes especially to mind). The fluid translation introduces English-speaking audiences to the first fruits of a highly imaginative writer.Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC Lib., Dublin, Ohio

Library Journal

Yocandra In The Paradise Of Nada ( May 1, 1997; 160 pp.; 1- 55970-362-8): A zestful portrayal of a young woman revolutionary in today's Cuba adroitly juxtaposes its questing heroine's hopeful energies to the desiccated sensibilities of the annoyingly generic men (including the Traitor and the Nihilist, among others) whom she expects to become both lovers and mentors. Valdés further contrasts the sterility of a self-consciously macho Marxist society with the almost frightening fertility of the land and, by implication, the women who surround them. A sexually forthright and amusing contemporary Candide (or, if you will, Candy).

Kirkus Reviews