The AssaultThe author of the brilliant and highly acclaimed memoir, Before Night Falls, Reinaldo Arenas concluded his sequence of five novels - at once a "secret history of Cuba" and a writer's autobiography - with an allegorical satire. In The Assault, he paints a harrowing, yet at times boldly entertaining, Kafkaesque picture of a dehumanized people and the despair of an observer/narrator himself clinging to sanity. This profane narrative, filled with righteous rage, takes us on a surreal journey through a blackly humorous shadowland where philosophical discussion, homosexuality, and forgetting the words to heroic anthems are comparable crimes - and a cockroach hunt makes a national holiday. With echoes of Rabelais, Swift, Orwell, and the films of Lois Bunuel, The Assault crowns the work of one of the most visionary writers to have emerged from Castro's Cuba, a writer whom Octavio Paz called "remarkable... as much for his intellectual dignity as for his talent". |
Contents
A View of Mariel | 1 |
Of what occurred to Don Quixote with a beautiful huntress | 3 |
De Sotos Expedition to Florida | 6 |
Copyright | |
36 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Aloysius Bertrand animal anthems authorized backside beasts Bureau of Counterwhispering camp Cell on Wheels checkpoint citizens Claw of Power cockroach Counterwhispering agent crawls creature crime criminal depraved dialogue disgusting Disorien-ted enemy execution eyes face flags François Rabelais free universe fuck fury Gargantua and Pantagruel glorious Represident glorious Supreme goose-stepping groin hell heroes High Secretary honor hooks horrible howl huge human blackboard Hurrah immense inmates interrogation kick kill live our glorious Long live look louder loudspeakers mass Miguel de Cervantes mother Multi-Family multi-overalls National Communal Prison National Reviewing neck non-spitter not-benches not-cell not-night not-park official once patriotic person pervert phosphorescence placards rage Reinaldo Arenas Represidential Capital Represiversary Reviewing Stand rodent Satellite Cities says screaming sentenced to Total Servo-Perimeter shaved heads shout skull smell sound spitting stinking stop Supreme Represident thing Total Annihilation touch turn vermin walk watch whispering woman word