Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada - Softcover

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Spanish

After being cast out of purgatory onto a mystical island (aka Cuba) "that in waiting to build a paradise has created a hell," a woman asks, "Why swim? Why drown?" thus foretelling Yocandra's highly ambivalent life in this interesting first novel by Cuban Valdes. From Yocandra's symbolic revolutionary origins to her life as the starving, abused wife of a diplomat turned psychotic (the "Traitor"), and finally to her life as a literary editor, we witness the demoralizing effects of a corrupt, repressive political regime on Yocandra, her parents, and her two closest friends, now in exile. But for Yocandra, ambivalence about Cuba prevails, most notably in her allegorically double sex life: she alternates nights with the "Nihilist" (whom she really loves and with whom she experiences prolonged, carefully described sexual ecstasies) and the "Traitor" (her ex-husband, whom she wishes to humiliate). Amidst such stark designations, Yocandra's satirical side also emerges, as does her struggle (as the novel closes with its opening line, and she wonders if she writes the words or vice versa) to emerge as a writer. Jim O'Laughlin