The Tower of the Antilles

PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist: A superb story collection about America and Cuba, escape and return, and history and hope (Los Angeles Times). Longlisted for The Story Prize One of Electric Literatures Best Short Story Collections of the Year In Superman, several possible story lines emerge about a 1950s Havana sex-show superstar who disappeared as soon as the revolution triumphed. North/South portrays a migrant family trying to cope with separation and the eventual disintegration of blood ties. The Cola of Oblivion follows a young woman who returns to Cuba and inadvertently uncorks a history of accommodation and betrayal among the family members who stayed behind during the revolution. And in the title story, an interrogation reveals a series of fantasies about escape and a history of futility. The Cubans in Achy Obejas story collection are haunted by islands: the island they fled, the island theyve created, the island they were taken to or forced from, the island they long for, the island they return to, and the island that can never be home again. [A] memorable short fiction collection. Publishers Weekly By turns searing and subtly magical . . . Obejas plots are ambushing, her characters startling, her metaphors fresh, her humor caustic, and her compassion potent in these intricate and haunting stories of displacement, loss, stoicism, and realization. Booklist Obejas writes with gentleness, without flashy wording or gimmicks, about people trying to figure out where they belong. Los Angeles Review of Books