El color del verano (1980) / The Color of Summer (1990)

El color del verano (“The Color of Summer”)
Reinaldo Arenas
Novel
1991

Fourth of five volumes of Arenas’ Pentogonia. Originally published in Spanish.

Synopsis: Arenas appears as three characters, Gabriel – the dutiful “straight” son, Reinaldo the expatriate author, and Skunk in a Funk, the ‘’picaro’’ (“faggot”) who seeks merely to live and work as an artist in Castro’s Cuba while engaging anonymous sex. The novel is set in a Carnival celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution…Arenas states that the novel is a: “grotesque and satirical (and therefore realistic) portrait of an aging tyranny and the tyrant himself…” He adds that the novel “is not a linear work, but circular, and therefore cyclonic, with a vortex or eye—the Carnival–towards which all vectors whirl.” (Wikipedia)