Description
Set in a nightmarish Cuba where language is policed and humanity is rationed, this final installment of Reinaldo Arenas’s “secret history” follows a government torturer turned agent of the Bureau of Counterwhispering. As he moves through a Kafka-esque landscape of surveillance and fear, he hunts “whisperers,” targets those deemed sexually deviant, and ferrets out dissidents—only to find that the machinery of repression is also erasing memory itself. Blending black humor with relentless dread, the novel explores themes of authoritarian control, the criminalization of desire, and the fragility of truth when speech can be punished. Arenas’s fierce, lyrical style turns the grotesque into a form of resistance, offering a harrowing portrait of what happens when a society decides that survival requires silence.
Available Editions
paperback
Penguin (Non-Classics)
Published Jun 1, 1995
176 pages
ISBN: 9780140157185
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Details
First Published
1995
Language
eng
Translation
From: spa
Content Warnings
Content and trigger warnings for The Assault by Reinaldo Arenas.