{"product_id":"before-night-falls-a-memoir","title":"Before Night Falls: A Memoir","description":"\"Any attempt to reckon with Cuba's torturous twentieth century will have to take into account Arenas's monumental work ... an essential human testimony, joyful and enraged, a triumph of conscience.\" -- Garth Greenwell\n\nThe acclaimed memoir of queer Cuban author Reinaldo Arenas chronicling his tumultuous yet luminary life, from his impoverished upbringing in Cuba to his imprisonment at the hands of a Communist regime\n\nThe astonishing memoir by visionary Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas \"is a book above all about being free,\" said The New York Review of Books--sexually, politically, artistically. Arenas recounts a stunning odyssey from his poverty-stricken childhood in rural Cuba and his adolescence as a rebel fighting for Castro, through his supression as a writer, imprisonment as a homosexual, his flight from Cuba via the Mariel boat lift, and his subsequent life and the events leading to his death in New York. In what The Miami Herald calls his \"deathbed ode to eroticism,\" Arenas breaks through the code of secrecy and silence that protects the privileged in a state where homosexuality is a political crime. Recorded in simple, straightforward prose, this is the true story of the Kafkaesque life and world re-created in the author's acclaimed novels.\u003cbr\u003eASIN: 0140157654\u003cbr\u003eVSKU: 31UE34003SV3_ns\u003cbr\u003eCondition: Acceptable\u003cbr\u003eAuthor\/Artist:Arenas, Reinaldo|Koch, Dolores M.\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNote:\u003c\/b\u003e Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition Notes\u003c\/b\u003e: The item is very worn but is perfectly usable. Signs of wear can include aesthetic issues such as scratches, dents, worn and creased covers, folded page corners and minor liquid stains. All pages and the cover are intact, but the dust cover may be missing. Pages may include moderate to heavy amount of notes and highlighting, but the text is not obscured or unreadable. Page edges may have foxing  age related spots and browning . May NOT include discs, access code or other supplemental materials.  \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Blue Vase Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43071099306045,"sku":"31UE34003SV3_ns","price":6.8,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0589\/4225\/9261\/files\/0140157654-0.jpg?v=1774819186","url":"https:\/\/www.bluevasebooks.com\/products\/before-night-falls-a-memoir","provider":"Blue Vase Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}