Marcial Gala Discusses The Black Cathedral with Anderson Tepper
Join us for a Zoom talk with Marcial Gala, who discusses his novel The Black Cathedral, with Anderson Tepper and translator Anna Kushner.
When the Stuart family moves to a marginal neighborhood of Cienfuegos, a city on the southern coast of Cuba, Arturo Stuart, a charistmatic, visionary preacher, discovers that God has given him a mission: to build a temple that surpasses any before seen in Cuba, and to make of Cienfuegos a new Jerusalem.
Told by a chorus of narrators—including gossips, gangsters, a ghost, and a serial killer—who flirt, lie, argue, and finish one another’s stories, this English-language debut from Cuban literary star Marcial Gala is a darkly comic indictment of modern Cuba. It is a portrait of what remains when dreams of utopia have withered away, a gritty and haunting tale of race, magic, belief, and fate.
Marcial Gala is a novelist, poet, and architect from Cuba. He won the Pinos Nuevos Prize for best short story in 1999. The Black Cathedral received the Alejo Carpentier Award for best novel in 2012 and the Critics’ Award in 2012. It was published in English translation this year. He also won the Ñ Prize of the City of Buenos Aires - Clarín for Novels 2018 for his novel Call Me Cassandra, forthcoming from FSG. Gala lives in Buenos Aires and Cienfuegos.
Mr. Gala, with translator Anna Kushner, will be in conversation with Anderson Tepper. Tepper is co-chair of the international committee of the Brooklyn Book Festival and has served on the advisory committee of the PEN World Voices Festival. He has written for a variety of publications, including The Times Book Review, Vanity Fair, Air Mail, and Words without Borders.
The daughter of Cuban exiles, Anna Kushner was born in Philadelphia and has been traveling to Cuba since 1999. She has translated the novels of Norberto Fuentes, Leonardo Padura, Guillermo Rosales, and Gonçalo M. Tavares, as well as two collections of non-fiction by Mario Vargas Llosa.
Please register for this free Zoom event. Registered audience members will receive a Zoom link prior to the event.
Marcial Gala Discusses The Black Cathedral with Anderson Tepper is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
