Antes Que Anochezca (Before Night Falls, in English) - Reinaldo Arenas
This is a book that I read for my university module ‘Culture and Identity in Latin America’ so I won’t go into great detail about it.
It is an autobiographical novel written by Reinaldo Arenas who was a homosexual man living in Cuba under Fidel Castro. He was greatly persecuted and ended up fleeing to America where he sadly committed suicide in 1990 at the age of only 47. It is astounding to read first-hand what horrors he went through in such recent times and what life in Cuba was really like then. Another surprising part of the book is how sexually explicit it is, it is not a book for the faint hearted in that respect. Whilst shocking it is written in such a beautiful way by Arenas that you can really appreciate the literary genius behind it. The book shows us snippets from throughout his life, from his childhood in the countryside with his mum, grandma and many aunts to his final freedom and happiness in New York before he became ill with AIDS.
As well as this biography put together and finished just before his death, Arenas has also written a number of other novels, all of which are said to have some sort of autobiographic aspect to them. I’d really love to read some of these as his life and writing has really captured me just through reading this book and I’d really recommend it to anyone who was interested in this area of study and interest. There is also a great film adaption of the book starring Javier Bardem which is well worth a watch if anybody does happen to be interested but the book seems a bit hard going.
The book is available in the original Spanish and English to get from amazon and I ended up reading both…does that mean I can count it as two books? I’m kidding. I won’t. Anyway, to wrap this up, I’m going to give this book 4 and a half stars. It’s definitely not something I would have picked for myself had I not had to study it but it really did interest me in the end and I (shock horror) actually enjoyed revising it for me exam!
Char x
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