But El Comandante’s main regret is the sloth and petty crime that have worked their way into his perfect socialist paradise. El Comandante also has family woes, including his good-natured brother Fernando, who’s enamored of Rolexes, golf and hot tubs (“Some Communist ideologue he’d turned out to be”). Something son, Goyito, an oafish drug addict who’s constantly messing up his own life. For 80-something Goyo, the main disappointment is his 60. By shuttling her narrative between these two old warriors, García, whose first novel, “Dreaming in Cuban,” was a finalist for the National Book Award, creates a bittersweet story whose power far outweighs its simple structure.īoth Goyo and El Comandante have bright memories of the days before the Revolution 60 years ago, and both have had to live with a long accretion of disappointments ever since. Goyo imagines “Here Lies a Cuban Hero” etched on his headstone, and despite mounting despair, El Comandante believes he deserves the same inscription. On one side is Goyo Herrera, who lives in exile in Miami on the other is Cuban dictator El Comandante - a cleverly fictionalized Fidel Castro. They share a long list of physical ailments and are related to swarms of clueless well-wishers, but more than anything else, they cling to a common dream: They each pine for a redemptive legacy. Despite their sworn hatred for each other, the two old men at the heart of Cristina García’s hilarious and often touching sixth novel, “King of Cuba,”have a number of things in common.
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