Novel
Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada
La nada cotidiana
Zoé Valdés · 1995
Synopsis
Patria, who prefers to be called Yocandra, was born in the very year of the triumph of the Cuban revolution and belongs to the first generation raised in a system meant to abolish injustice. But the promised paradise has become a hell of frustrations, shortages, apathy and despair. Caught between two men, the Traitor and the Nihilist, she takes refuge in writing, with a rage born of powerlessness, and tells of daily life, the past and the present to escape the emptiness that threatens her.
Context
The novel appeared in 1995 in French, from Actes Sud, translated by Carmen Val Julián, the year in which the author settled in Paris and could no longer return to Cuba; it then went through many editions in Spanish. Its corrosive humour and disenchanted irony make it one of the landmark books of Cuban exile literature of the nineties. It received the Liberatur Prize in Frankfurt in 1997 and appeared in English in 1999 as Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada.
Who it is for
For an angry and funny novel about the disillusionment of a Cuban generation, written on the edge of exile.
Prizes and reception
Honoured in Germany two years after its publication, it was reissued in French as Le Roman de Yocandra.