the black cathedral a novel marcial gala

Eliot, I think that I am leaning out the balcony again to look at the sea.” “I think that I am not here, in the violent land of Angola, I think that I have not crossed the ocean on a ship full of Russian soldiers… I think that I went to the university, where I study literature and read T.S. Raul is sensitive and intelligent and would be better suited studying literature at a university.

From the start, he predicts his own death as well as that of others. Like Cassandra, Raul has the curse of prophecy. What he does know to be true is that he is the reincarnation of the mythological Cassandra. He is most definitely not suited to the violent battlefields of Angola where he is sent as a soldier after finishing high school. Raul is a young Cuban who doesn’t feel he belongs in his body and he certainly doesn’t fit in a hostile post-revolutionary country like Cuba. “Everything is like that, I think, nothing and no one are as they should be.” Just look at that cool cover! Marcial Gala has written a devastatingly beautiful story that sets it apart from the rest. I want to make it clear that THIS is the book you want to pick up if you seek not just a retelling of the old myths, but something refreshingly different that mixes up a bit of mythology and historical fiction using a very modern voice. I suspect after the success of Madeline Miller’s books, a ton of writers jumped on that bandwagon and a slew of readers followed. Their covers even have a sameness to them that make me fear a uniformity to the stories. Have you seen all of those mythological retellings that seem to be all over the place right now? I have. Lyrical and gritty, heartbreaking and luminous, Rauli’s is the story of the inexorable pull of destiny. Burdened with knowledge of tragedies yet to come, Rauli nonetheless strives to know himself. 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. And third, that he is the reincarnation of the Trojan princess Cassandra. Second, that he will die, aged eighteen, as a soldier in the Cuban intervention in Angola. 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.

He loves to read, especially Greek myths, but in Cuba in the 1970s, novels and gods can be dangerous. 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. Ten-year-old Rauli lives in a world that is often hostile. From Marcial Gala, the author of the award-winning The Black Cathedral, Call Me Cassandra is a darkly magical tale of a haunted young dreamer, born in the wrong body and time, who believes himself to be a doomed prophetess from ancient Greek mythology

The black cathedral a novel marcial gala