The Palace of the White Skunks.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

One of the most important dissident Cuban novelists, Reinaldo Arenas captures in much of his work the violent, claustrophobic atmosphere of prerevolutionary Cuba. Through a compendium of impressionistic images, monologues, dialogues, newspaper clippings, advertisements, and dream sequences, The Palace of the White Skunks tells the story of a peasant family caught in the grip of poverty and hopelessness.

There is no idealization of the common man here. Polo, the grandfather, escapes a treacherous existence in Canarias only to find misery in Cuba. Duped by his son-in-law, he sells the family farm and moves to town, where conditions are even worse. Angry, depressed, and guilt-ridden, he takes refuge in silence, punishing his family by refusing to talk. His reproachful wife Jacinta finds solace in religion bordering on fetichism, while at the same time brutalizing her grandchildren. Eldest daughter Adolfina, a fiftyish spinster who aches for a man, tortures the others by holing up in the family's only bathroom for hours, then finally takes to the streets in an unsuccessful search for a lover. Her sister Cecilia, whose only child, Esther, died of poisoning, slips into madness. Digna, abandoned with two children by her husband Moises, follows in Cecilia's footsteps, as will Tico and Anisia, her offspring. Onerica escapes to New York, leaving behind her feeble-minded son, Fortunato, who eventually runs off to join the rebels during the Revolution. This acrimonious lot takes out its frustrations and bitterness by lashing out. Violence and insanity are the family's only escapes.

Like many contemporary writers, Arenas abandons traditional chronology; scenes from the 1950s are juxtaposed with others from the 30s and 40s. The jumble of fragments and the confusion of time frames help to create the feeling of chaos and hysteria that dominates the book. A kind of poetry is derived from the repetition of phrases and images.

In this household of madmen, cranks, and unwanted children, the lines between life and death, sanity and insanity, reality and fantasy disappear. Death is a palpable presence. Death plays in the patio with the wheel of a bicycle...