Synopses & Reviews
Nine short stories open a door onto working class Santurce, Puerto Rico, where shoddy medical offices, Catholic churches, Mormon temples, and Santeria storefronts line the sunbaked streets. Here, a bumbling prostitute-turned-fugitive bewilderingly avoids capture. Back-biting mothers hand down judgment on their neighbors and the world from their front lawns. A desperate dog-owner will do anything to have his precious animal sent to a taxidermist. A young Chosen One with a curious gift helps his fellow parishioners find God.
Mundo Cruel, Luis Negron's debut book, elegantly presents to its readers a world both tragic and outrageous. Masterfully satirical with a discrete solemnity at its core, Mundo Cruel's most remarkable element is its language. Several of its stories feature unnamed protagonists brought to life by their speech--colloquial, self-incriminating, and idiosyncratic--revealing Negron's talent for conjuring the spoken word in all its subtlety.
Synopsis
Luis Negrón’s debut collection reveals the intimate world of a small community in Puerto Rico joined together by its transgressive sexuality. The writing straddles the shifting line between pure, unadorned storytelling and satire, exploring the sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking nature of survival in a decidedly cruel world.
Synopsis
"Hilarious and heart-wrenching, provocative and pitch-perfect, each story is a tiny, transgressive explosion. I feel inadequate to the task of expressing just how wonderful this book is...read it slowly, and listen close; here is a master storyteller at his finest."–Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
Luis Negrón’s debut collection reveals the intimate world of a small community in Puerto Rico joined together by its transgressive sexuality. The writing straddles the shifting line between pure, unadorned storytelling and satire, exploring the sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking nature of survival in a decidedly cruel world.
About the Author
LUIS NEGRON was born in the city of Guayama, Puerto Rico, in 1970. He studied journalism and has written film reviews for major Puerto Rican periodicals including
Claridad and
El Poeta. He has worked extensively in the queer arts community in Puerto Rico, including a founding role in
Producciones Mano Santa, which has sponsored cultural and artistic productions over the last ten years. He co-edited
Los Otros Cuerpos, an anthology of queer writing from Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican diaspora.
SUZANNE JILL LEVINE's acclaimed translations, which include works by Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Three Trapped Tigers) and Manuel Puig (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), have helped introduce the world to some of the icons of contemporary Latin American literature. She is also editor of Penguin Classics' essays and poetry of Jorge Luis Borges and the author of The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction.