Translation Rights TQE / The Year of the Calipso

One hot afternoon, when the residents of Havana’s Marianao neighborhood try to avoid the heat and the radio broadcasts the melody of a calypso, a fifteen year-old boy goes out to the patio hoping for a bit of fresh air. Sitting under the shade of the trees, he notices a sweaty gardener, unaware of his presence, fixing the plants, sharpening his machete and disappearing into the tool shack before the rain falls. This vision awakens previously unknown sensations in him and the desire for new experiences. Nothing will be the same after that, from the short erotic novels that he discovers in his house, to the non-innocent encounters that he will spy on, or the voluptuous attitude of characters such as his uncle Mirén, the Landín sisters, the Black Tola, or the attractive pitcher from the high school baseball team. Everything will lead him to the joyful discovery of sex. In his initiation, the young man will learn that eroticism is like a battle full of strategies, a fight without winners or losers, but for which one must be prepared. His experiences will open his eyes once and for all to reality and will mean the inevitable end of his childhood during that year, unforgettable to him, when the entire world vibrated to the rhythm of the calypso.

Abilio Estévez was born in Havana in 1954 and currently lives in Barcelona. He has a degree in Hispanic Literature and Languages and also studied Philosophy in his native city. He has written two magnificent critically-acclaimed novels, Tuyo es el reino (Thine Is the Kingdom) -winner of the Cuban Critics Prize in 1999 and of the Best Foreign Book Award in France in 2000- and Los palacios distantes (The Distant Palaces) selected by the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia as the Book of the Year in 2004. Both novels have been translated into more than ten languages. He is also the author of a book of short stories, El horizonte y otros regresos (The Horizon and Other Ways Back) –Luis Cernuda Prize in 1986–, of the poetic prose Manual de tentaciones (Temptation Manual) –Cuban Critics Prize in 1987–, and of different plays, such as the monologues Ceremonias para actores desesperados (Ceremonies for Desperate Actors).