Telex from Cuba A Novel
Telex from Cuba A Novel by Rachel Kushner is a reprint edition published by Scribner on June 2, 2009, featuring 336 pages in English. This debut novel explores the coming-of-age experiences of young Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites in Oriente Province, where the American presence is dominated by the United Fruit Company. Set against a backdrop of indulgence and betrayal, the narrative reveals the complexities of childhood amidst the adult world’s moral ambiguities, including themes of race and violence.
Readers will find a richly layered story that intertwines the lives of the children with the political upheaval brewing in Cuba. As Everly and K.C. navigate their sheltered existence, they become increasingly aware of the tensions surrounding them, particularly as Fidel and Raúl Castro’s revolt begins to unfold. The novel captures the stark contrasts between the innocence of youth and the harsh realities of history, providing a vivid portrayal of a time and place marked by both beauty and brutality.
Official synopsis Publisher
Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction
The debut novel by New York Times bestselling author Rachel Kushner, called “shimmering” (The New Yorker), “multilayered and absorbing” (The New York Times Book Review), and “gorgeously written” (Kirkus Reviews).
Young Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites come of age in Oriente Province, where the Americans tend their own fiefdom—three hundred thousand acres of United Fruit Company sugarcane that surround their gated enclave. If the rural tropics are a child’s dreamworld, Everly and K.C. nevertheless have keen eyes for the indulgences and betrayals of the grown-ups around them—the mordant drinking and illicit loves, the race hierarchies and violence.
In Havana, a thousand kilometers and a world away from the American colony, a cabaret dancer meets a French agitator named Christian de La Mazière, whose seductive demeanor can’t mask his shameful past. Together they become enmeshed in the brewing political underground. When Fidel and Raúl Castro lead a revolt from the mountains above the cane plantation, torching the sugar and kidnapping a boat full of “yanqui” revelers, K.C. and Everly begin to discover the brutality that keeps the colony humming. Though their parents remain blissfully untouched by the forces of history, the children hear the whispers of what is to come.
Kushner’s first novel is a tour de force, haunting and compelling, with the urgency of a telex from a forgotten time and place.
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