Why read on Fable?
Publisher Description
“This posthumous translation of Rosales, a Cuban-American writer who committed suicide in 1993, delivers a raw, powerful story set in a Miami home for the mentally ill… It’s a frightening, nihilistic cousin of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”—Publishers Weekly
Never before available in English, The Halfway House is a trip to the darkest corners of the human condition. Humiliations, filth, stench, and physical abuse comprise the asphyxiating atmosphere of a halfway house for indigents in Miami where, in a shaken mental state, the writer William Figueras lives after his exile from Cuba. He claims to have gone crazy after the Cuban government judged his first novel “morose, pornographic, and also irreverent, because it dealt harshly with the Communist Party,” and prohibited its publication. By the time he arrives in Miami twenty years later, he is a “toothless, skinny, frightened guy who had to be admitted to a psychiatric ward that very day” instead of the ready-for-success exile his relatives expected to welcome and receive among them. Placed in a halfway house, with its trapped bestial inhabitants and abusive overseers, he enters a hell. Romance appears in the form of Frances, a mentally fragile woman and an angel, with whom he tries to escape in this apocalyptic classic of Cuban literature.“Behind the hardly one hundred pages,” Canarias Diario stated, “is the work of a tireless fabulist, a writer who delights in language, extracting verbs and adjectives which are powerful enough to stop the reader in his tracks.”
7 Reviews
4.0
DuVay Knox
Created over 1 year agoShare
Report
“When I go krazy I wanna write jes like this. Shit that gits at the underbelly of the fucked-uppedness of Amerikan society. Especially, its treatment of the MENTILLY-DISTURBED. And their HOUSED existence in HALFWAY HOUSES like the one in this book. GUILLERMO, Brotha, U left us too soon. I understand. Butt this prose u left behind weighs HEAVY in its delivery n descriptions of how simply fighting to live a valued life is DISDAINED by those in power. The short 78 pages here are worth more than whole novels of 250 pages of bullshit by muthafuckaz think they are saying something necessary. BUTT THIS. Yeah, son. THIS book is not only necessary butt VITAL and KRUCIAL to Politikal Discourse for what to do with DISPLACED peeps. Do we KEEP our PEEPS?? Or throw em way like so noted in the prose?? ROSALES noted that MENTAL FACILITIES are essentially TOMBS for those dealing with MENTAL ISSUES. And its a muthafuckin shame. The BOOK tho, should be part of the CONVO of every Discussion about The treatment of the Marginalized (for whatever reason). Its a classic. A standard for the Memoir. A standard for Latin writing. Period. All the mo betta since LATIN and ASIAN writers are dropping summa da best LIT in da game rite now. Always have to me (Ex: JUAN RULFO/CLARICE LISPECTOR/JULIO CORTAZAR/HORACIO CASTELLANOS MOYA & EDWIN TORRES hoo wrote CARLITOS WAY....and ASIAN Author YUKIO MISHIMA of SUN & STEEL). And they remain mah favorite culturiffic group to read”
FannyRantway
Created over 3 years agoShare
Report
dila
Created almost 5 years agoShare
Report
Kayla Whitney
Created almost 12 years agoShare
Report
Jonathan Eisen
Created over 12 years agoShare
Report
About Guillermo Rosales
Guillermo Rosales (b. Cuba 1946 – d. Miami, 1993) grew up in revolutionary Cuba where his father served in Cuba’s diplomatic corps. He became a journalist and then a promising novelist. Yet, his work was denounced as “morose, pornographic,and irreverent” by the Communist Party, which led to his first nervous breakdown. Forced to leave the country for Miami, he suffered from schizophrenia, was in and out of psychiatric wards, then tragically, after destroying most of his unpublished manuscripts, shot himself at age 47.
Other books by Guillermo Rosales
Anna Kushner
Anna Kushner was born in Philadelphia and first traveled to Cuba in 1999. Beside her “commanding translation” (Words Without Borders) of The Halfway House (ND, 2009), her writing and translations have appeared in numerous other print and web publications.
Other books by Anna Kushner
Start a Book Club
Start a public or private book club with this book on the Fable app today!FAQ
Do I have to buy the ebook to participate in a book club?
Why can’t I buy the ebook on the app?
How is Fable’s reader different from Kindle?
Do you sell physical books too?
Are book clubs free to join on Fable?
How do I start a book club with this book on Fable?
Similar Books
Save to a list
0
/30
0
/100
Private List