The acclaimed memoir of homosexual Cuban author Reinaldo Arenas chronicling
his tumultuous yet luminary life, from his impoverished upbringing in Cuba
to his imprisonment at the hands of a Communist regime, now a part of the
Penguin Vitae series. A Penguin Classics Hardcover The astonishing memoir
by visionary Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas is a book above all about being
free, said The New York Review of Books--sexually, politically,
artistically. Arenas recounts a stunning odyssey from his poverty-stricken
childhood in rural Cuba and his adolescence as a rebel fighting for Castro,
through his supression as a writer, imprisonment as a homosexual, his
flight from Cuba via the Mariel boat lift, and his subsequent life and the
events leading to his death in New York. In what The Miami Herald calls his
deathbed ode to eroticism, Arenas breaks through the code of secrecy and
silence that protects the privileged in a state where homosexuality is a
political crime. Recorded in simple, straightforward prose, this is the
true story of the Kafkaesque life and world re-created in the author's
acclaimed novels. Penguin Classics launches a new hardcover series with
five American classics that are relevant and timeless in their power, and
part of a dynamic and diverse landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction
from almost seventy-five years of classics publishing. Penguin Vitae
provides readers with beautifully designed classics that have shaped the
course of their lives, and welcomes new readers to discover these literary
gifts of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative
originality.