Firefly

"Sarduy is the master of wordscapes that dip, shake, and explode."--"The New York Times Book Review"For the first time in English, Severo Sarduy's most autobiographical work, centered on two transvestites who undergo oppositional sexual surgeries (one is castrated, the other is given a new member). This convention-defying, scatological, and very funny novel is a paradise of words, "paradisic by plenitude" (Roland Barthes).Severo Sarduy (1937-1993) was a Cuban poet, author, playwright, and literary critic, as well as a leading intellectual in the Cuban Revolution. His novel "Cobra" was awarded the Prix Medicis. Firefly is a dream-like evocation of pre-war Cuba, replete with hurricanes, mystical cults and slave-markets. The story is the coming-of-age of a precocious and exuberant boy with an oversized head and underdeveloped sense of direction, who views the world as a threatening conspiracy. Told in breathless and lyrical prose, the novel is a loving rendition of a long-lost home, a meditation on exile, and an allegory of Cuba’s isolation in the world.