book cover of Sacrificio
 

Sacrificio

(2022)
A novel by

 
 
Set in Cuba in 1998, Sacrificio is a triumphant and mesmeric work of violence, loss, and identity, following a group of young HIV-positive counterrevolutionaries who seek to overthrow the Castro government.

Cuba, 1998: Rafa, an Afro-Cuban orphan, moves to Havana with nothing to his name and falls into a job at a café. He is soon drawn into a web of ever-shifting entanglements with his boss’s son, the charismatic Renato, leader of the counterrevolutionary group “Los Injected Ones,” which is planning a violent overthrow of the Castro government during Pope John Paul II’s upcoming visit.
 
When Renato goes missing, Rafa’s search for his friend takes him through various haunts in Havana: from an AIDS sanatorium, to the guest rooms of tourist hotels, to the outskirts of the capital, where he enters a phantasmagorical slum cobbled together from the city’s detritus by Los Injected Ones.
 
A novel of cascading prose that captures a nation in slow collapse,
Sacrificio is a visionary work, capturing the fury, passion, fatalism, and grim humor of young lives lived at the margins of a society they desperately wish to change.

Genre: Literary Fiction

Praise for this book

"Compelling and sinuous, bleak and darkly funny, Sacrificio is a book about queer desire, the mutability of language, and layer upon layer of deceit: self-deception, family betrayals, and the disinformation of spies and governments. Mestre-Reed's prose is frenetic, wry, and utterly charming--I'd follow these characters anywhere." - Kimberly King Parsons

"Sacrificio is an explosive, propulsive, utterly captivating novel. It is a feast of ideas and ideals, intrigue and passion, love and revolution; but above all it is a feast of language. You won't be able to put it down, and even if you could you wouldn't want to." - Justin Taylor


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