5/29/2023 0 Comments Call me cassandra by marcial gala![]() ![]() Knowing the outcome from the beginning offers little solace. ![]() ![]() Translated by Cuban American Anna Kushner, Gala’s second English-language novel (after The Black Cathedral) is no easy read: the violence here is vivid and gut-churning throughout. Her fate – and everyone else’s – is already determined: Cassandra’s future holds no kindness. As a soldier at 18, she’s sent across the world as part of the 1975 Cuban intervention supporting the communist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola. Bullied by father, brother, and schoolmates for not embodying the gender assigned at birth, Cassandra escapes to a faraway, long-ago Troy – whether imaginary or real is irrelevant – to be nurtured by memories, advised by mythic voices. For young Raúl, his life and body are hardly his own – but knowing he is Cassandra reincarnate is absolute. Truth from others eludes Raúl throughout his short existence, with a philandering father, a belligerent older brother, and a mother disconnected from reality. ![]() Millennia later, a slight, blond 10-year-old in Cienfuegos, Cuba, insists, “I don’t want to be this Raúl, I want to be Cassandra.” And yet in the first few pages of Cuban novelist Marcial Gala’s provocative Call Me Cassandra, Raúl reveals his immutable fate, to become a “little pretend soldier in Angola” and die at just 19. Greek mythology’s princess Cassandra was given the power of prophecy, but when she refused the advances of the god Apollo, she was cursed forever with disbelief. ![]()
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