Firefly [Paperback]

Firefly is a dream-like evocation of pre-war Cuba, replete with hurricanes, mystical cults and slave-markets. The story is the coming-of-age of a precocious and exuberant boy with an oversized head and underdeveloped sense of direction, who views the world as a threatening conspiracy. Told in breathless and lyrical prose, the novel is a loving rendition of a long-lost home, a meditation on exile, and an allegory of Cuba’s isolation in the world.Praise for Severo Sarduy's Prix Médicis-winning Cobra

Sarduy is the master of wordscapes that dip, shake and explore. —New York Times Book Review

A paradise of words…a marbled iridescent text; we are gorged with language, like children who are never refused anything…Cobra is the pledge of continuous jubilation, The moment when by its very excess verbal pleasure chokes an reels into bliss. —Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

Sarduy rendered the epiphany of the body luminous, where the pleasure of void meets the furious fire of the world. —The Washington Post

Severe Sarduy has everything…so brilliant, so funny, and so bewilderingly apt in his borrowings, his derivations, as well as in his inventions, his findings, he leaves one breathless, like a shot of rum.—Richard HowardSevero Sarduy (1937-1993), Cuban poet, fiction writer, playwright, and literary critic, is considered one of the best prose artists of the twentieth century. In 1972, he was awarded the Prix Médicis for Cobra, one of his six highly acclaimed novels. Sarduy also painted, hosted a radio program, and, as an editor at EditionslS0