At the heart of this incandescent tales burns sensitive Rauli, caught between the Gods and the Revolution, between a body that he longs to escape and a world that lets no one like him escape. Call Me Cassandra is Marcial Gala’s masterpiece, blending Greek myth with the Cuban intervention in Angola. 'A spellbinding novel by one of the best writers of the Americas. Reviews BookĮxcerpts About the Author Reviews Praise for Call Me Cassandra Lyrical and gritty, heartbreaking and luminous, Rauli’s is the story of the inexorable pull of destiny. Burdened with knowledge of tragedies yet to come, Rauli nonetheless strives to know himself. Moving between Rauli’s childhood and adolescence, between the Angolan battlefield, the Cuban city of Cienfuegos, and the shores of ancient Troy, Marcial Gala’s Call Me Cassandra tells of the search for identity amid the collapse of Cuba’s utopian dreams. And third, that he is the reincarnation of the Trojan princess Cassandra. Second, that he will die, aged eighteen, as a soldier in the Cuban intervention in Angola. Despite the signs that warn Rauli to repress and fear what he is, he knows three things to be true: First, that he was born in the wrong body. He loves to read, especially Greek myths, but in Cuba in the 1970s, novels and gods can be dangerous.

His older brother is violent his philandering father doesn’t understand him his intelligence and sensitivity do not endear him to the other children at school. Ten-year-old Rauli lives in a world that is often hostile.

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Computer Science & Information Technology.The appearance of mythical beings during opportune times, Raúl’s pitiless predictions, and the unfolding events of a fraught time in Cuban history contribute to the power of Gala’s creative spin on an indelible myth and imaginative, memorable, and heartbreaking tale of identity and fatalism. Gala switches between shuffled time frames in Raúl’s life, during which, like Cassandra, he is resigned to his fate and submits to the psychological and sexual abuse inflicted by those close to him. Raúl’s resemblance to his pretty aunt Nancy, his feminine demeanor, and his father’s controlling presence complicate matters as he grows up feeling unmoored in a feverish, late-1970s, Marxist-Leninist society on the brink of a violent revolution. The nonlinear plot follows Raúl Iriarte, a blond and blue-eyed Cuban enamored of poetry and classical literature who also happens to be a reincarnation of Cassandra. This tale dramatizes the parallels between Cassandra, the Trojan princess and prophet involved in the Trojan War, and the coming-of-age of a closeted transgender Cuban and his involvement in the Angolan Civil War. As in The Black Cathedral (2020), Cuban writer Gala sets his newest work of magical realism in his hometown of Cienfuegos.

Call me cassandra by marcial gala