Descripciones mejoradas de Syndetics:

"Por primera vez se publica en Espana la, a quien Javier Bardem ha interpretado recientemente en la pelicula Antes que anochezca, un papel que le merecio una nominacion como mejor actor protagonista en los Oscr de Hollywood. Hasta ahora solo se conocia en nuestro pais la narrativa de este escritor quien, enfermo de SIDA, se suicido en Nueva York en 1990, tras haberse exiliado de la isla por su disidencia con el regimen castrista. Honda y sensual, la poesia de Arenas es una de las mas altas manifestaciones de la literatura espanola de este siglo y el espacio donde la personalidad y el mundo del malogrado escritor se desenvuelve con mas nitidez, sinceridad, fuerza y maestria. Los cuatro libros que componen este volumen, Esa sinfonia que milagrosamente escuchas, Sonetos desde el infierno, Mi amante el mar y El otono me regala una hoja."

Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

Library Journal Review

A Cuban political activist and exile writer in the United States, Arenas lived with AIDS until he terminated his life in 1990. His literary work includes acclaimed novels, critical essays, and plays about persecution and repression under Castro's regime, such as Celestino antes del alba (Celestino Before Dawn, Tusquets, 2000). This is a complete collection of his poems, written during the 1970s in Cuba and the 1980s in the United States. A short bio-critical essay by writer Juan Abreu, a close friend of Arenas, sets his poetry within the political context of the revolution. Thematically, the poems reflect Arenas's determination to express homosexual themes, anathema to revolutionary institutions, and to denounce the political persecution of gay intellectuals in Cuba after Castro's triumph. His accusations include constant police harassment, unfounded imprisonment, and torture as punishments for his open homosexual practices and for publishing abroad without official permission. Through a sociological approach to homosexuality, Arenas gives voice and empowers all those homosexual intellectuals on the island who had to struggle with censorship and sexual discrimination, among them the renowned Jose Lezama Lima (Paradiso [Paradise], Alianza, 2000). The poems also provide an excellent complement to the account of Arenas's life that recently came to international attention through the 2000 film Before Night Falls (based on Antes que anochezca, Tusquets, 2001). Strongly recommended for libraries with Cuban and Cuban American literary collections, as well as bookstores. Rafael Ocasio, Agnes Scott Coll., GA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

The novel The Ill-fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando recreates in a poetic style, in which time, space, and character move on multiple planes of fantasy and reality, the life of Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, a Mexican priest famous for his hatred of the Spaniards. Mier denied even that the Spaniards had brought Christianity to the New World. Arenas begins with a letter to the friar: "Ever since I discovered you in an execrable history of Spanish literature, described as the friar who had traveled over the whole of Europe on foot having improbable adventures; I have tried to find out more about you." In a meditation on the nature of fiction, Arenas discovers that he and Servando are the same person, and author and character become one.

(Bowker Author Biography)