Sacrificio, Ernesto MestreReed
Sacrificio, Ernesto MestreReed
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Sacrificio

Author: Ernesto Mestre-Reed

Narrator: Emmanuel Chumaceiro

Unabridged: 13 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/06/2022


Synopsis

Set in Cuba in 1998, Sacrificio is a triumphant and mesmeric work of violence, loss, and identity, following a group of young HIV-positive counterrevolutionaries who seek to overthrow the Castro government.

Cuba, 1998: Rafa, an Afro-Cuban orphan, moves to Havana with nothing to his name and falls into a job at a café. He is soon drawn into a web of ever-shifting entanglements with his boss's son, the charismatic Renato, leader of the counterrevolutionary group "Los Injected Ones," which is planning a violent overthrow of the Castro government during Pope John Paul II's upcoming visit.

When Renato goes missing, Rafa's search for his friend takes him through various haunts in Havana: from an AIDS sanatorium, to the guest rooms of tourist hotels, to the outskirts of the capital, where he enters a phantasmagorical slum cobbled together from the city's detritus by Los Injected Ones.

A novel of cascading prose that captures a nation in slow collapse, Sacrificio is a visionary work, capturing the fury, passion, fatalism, and grim humor of young lives lived at the margins of a society they desperately wish to change.

About Ernesto Mestre-Reed

Ernesto Mestre-Reed was born in Guantanamo, Cuba, and lives in New York City. He is the author of the novels The Lazarus Rumba and The Second Death of Única Aveyano. He is a Guggenheim Fiction Fellow and a MacDowell Fellow and teaches at Brooklyn College. He has also translated many novels from Spanish, including Laura Esquivel's Malinche.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kassidy

I was given an advanced copy of the audiobook by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This book was very dense and a little difficult to understand as someone that has very limited knowledge of Cuba in the 1990's. It required me to do some outside research to be able to understand the HIV his......more

Goodreads review by Justin

Gave up at 64%. There’s a good book in here but it shouldn’t be the work of the reader to find it.......more

Goodreads review by Erik

Ernesto Mestre-Reed's Sacrificio is a magical story of rebellion against the powerful with any means necessary. Rafa is an orphan in 1990s Cuba who finds himself welcomed home by his lover-turned-brother Nicolas. Both live at the fringes of society, with Rafa helping Nic's mother run her restaurant a......more