Yocandra in the paradise of nada : a novel of Cuba / Zoe Valdes; translated from the spanish by Sabina Cienfuegos

"Born the year of Castro's Revolution, the daughter of a hero of the sugarcane harvest - Che Guevara himself draped a Cuban flag across her mother's pregnant belly - Yocandra embodies its promise and hope. But she grows up to see how the regime is turning her beautiful island into a wasteland of despair, and embarks on her own course of survival. At sixteen she begins shacking up with the Traitor, a self-styled philosopher and poet whose much-vaunted and long-awaited novel is as phony as its author; later, she takes up with the Nihilist, a filmmaker with no films to his credit because the authorities have banned them all as anti-Cuban. Along the way, we meet Yocandra's best friend, the Gusana, whose ticket out of Cuba is loveless marriage to an overweight Spaniard; and the Lynx, an artist and aesthete who floats his way into exile strapped to a raft." "For Yocandra and her friends, coping with life in Cuba means escaping into dreams, humor, and sex, and developing an appetite for the absurdities of existence. Kindred spirits and lost souls, their rebellion and rage against El Comandante and his rule also express their fierce love for their country, a patriotism that can feel like a prison sentence."