Call Me Cassandra
Call Me Cassandra
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Publisher's Hardcover ©2022--
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Farrar, Straus, Giroux
Annotation: Finalist for the 2023 PEN Translation Prize and the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction "Dazzling." --Marcela Val... more
Genre: [Fantasy fiction]
 
Reviews: 5
Catalog Number: #360662
Format: Publisher's Hardcover
Copyright Date: 2022
Edition Date: 2022 Release Date: 01/11/22
Pages: 211 pages
ISBN: 0-374-60201-8
ISBN 13: 978-0-374-60201-7
Dewey: Fic
LCCN: 2021038618
Dimensions: 22 cm
Language: English
Reviews:
Starred Review for Kirkus Reviews (Tue Feb 28 00:00:00 CST 2023)

A figure from Greek mythology is reborn in the Caribbean in this novel by the award-winning author of The Black Cathedral (2020).In 1975, Cuba sent troops to support the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola in that country's civil war. Over the next decade and a half, more than 300,000 Cubans would participate in this proxy war between Soviet-style communism and Western powers led by the United States. This is the historical backdrop for Gala's tale of a boy from the port city of Cienfuegos who believes that he is the reincarnation of Cassandra, the priestess of Apollo "forever condemned to know the future and never be believed." Rauli's sense that he is in the wrong time and place is exacerbated by the fact that he is a slight, fair, bookish boy who likes to wear dresses in a culture that prizes machismo. His difference will make him a target-for other kids, for his fellow soldiers, for the captain who brutally abuses him-but it also gives meaning to a life that he knows will be short. Because he has Cassandra's curse, he knows that he will die in Angola at 19. Before he dies, though, he will converse with Greek gods and African orishas and be accompanied by a chorus of Erinyes that gives his story the shape of classical tragedy. Fate hangs over this novel. Rauli cannot escape his doom any more than the nymph Thetis can protect her son, Achilles, by dressing him as a girl. Of course, the clothes that are meant to disguise Achilles' true nature reveal Rauli's, but it's a truth that he is compelled to keep hidden. The Cuban conscript is not a great warrior, and his grave will be an unmarked patch of jungle, but-unlike the hero of the Iliad-Rauli has the power to give voice to his own story.A haunting meditation on identity and violence.

Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 04 00:00:00 CDT 2024)

A figure from Greek mythology is reborn in the Caribbean in this novel by the award-winning author of The Black Cathedral (2020).In 1975, Cuba sent troops to support the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola in that country's civil war. Over the next decade and a half, more than 300,000 Cubans would participate in this proxy war between Soviet-style communism and Western powers led by the United States. This is the historical backdrop for Gala's tale of a boy from the port city of Cienfuegos who believes that he is the reincarnation of Cassandra, the priestess of Apollo "forever condemned to know the future and never be believed." Rauli's sense that he is in the wrong time and place is exacerbated by the fact that he is a slight, fair, bookish boy who likes to wear dresses in a culture that prizes machismo. His difference will make him a target-for other kids, for his fellow soldiers, for the captain who brutally abuses him-but it also gives meaning to a life that he knows will be short. Because he has Cassandra's curse, he knows that he will die in Angola at 19. Before he dies, though, he will converse with Greek gods and African orishas and be accompanied by a chorus of Erinyes that gives his story the shape of classical tragedy. Fate hangs over this novel. Rauli cannot escape his doom any more than the nymph Thetis can protect her son, Achilles, by dressing him as a girl. Of course, the clothes that are meant to disguise Achilles' true nature reveal Rauli's, but it's a truth that he is compelled to keep hidden. The Cuban conscript is not a great warrior, and his grave will be an unmarked patch of jungle, but-unlike the hero of the Iliad-Rauli has the power to give voice to his own story.A haunting meditation on identity and violence.

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Starred Review for Kirkus Reviews (Tue Feb 28 00:00:00 CST 2023)
ALA Booklist
Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 04 00:00:00 CDT 2024)
Library Journal
New York Times Book Review
Reading Level: 12.0
Interest Level: 9+

Finalist for the 2023 PEN Translation Prize and the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction "Dazzling." --Marcela Valdes, The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) "A spellbinding novel by one of the best writers of the Americas." --Junot Díaz, author of This is How You Lose Her Ten-year-old Rauli lives in a world that is often hostile. 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. He loves to read, especially Greek myths, but in Cuba in the 1970s, novels and gods can be dangerous. 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. Second, that he will die, aged eighteen, as a soldier in the Cuban intervention in Angola. And third, that he is the reincarnation of the Trojan princess Cassandra. 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. Burdened with knowledge of tragedies yet to come, Rauli nonetheless strives to know himself. Lyrical and gritty, heartbreaking and luminous, Rauli's is the story of the inexorable pull of destiny.


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