Telex From Cuba: A Novel

Try it Now Firm without compromise. Cancel whenever you want.

Synopsis

Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction

The debut novel by New York Times bestselling author Rachel Kushner, called “shimmering” (The New Yorker), “multilayered and absorbing” (The New York Times Book Review), and “gorgeously written” (Kirkus Reviews).

Young Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites come of age in Oriente Province, where the Americans tend their own fiefdom—three hundred thousand acres of United Fruit Company sugarcane that surround their gated enclave. If the rural tropics are a child's dreamworld, Everly and K.C. nevertheless have keen eyes for the indulgences and betrayals of the grown-ups around them—the mordant drinking and illicit loves, the race hierarchies and violence.

In Havana, a thousand kilometers and a world away from the American colony, a cabaret dancer meets a French agitator named Christian de La Mazière, whose seductive demeanor can't mask his shameful past. Together they become enmeshed in the brewing political underground. When Fidel and Raúl Castro lead a revolt from the mountains above the cane plantation, torching the sugar and kidnapping a boat full of "yanqui" revelers, K.C. and Everly begin to discover the brutality that keeps the colony humming. Though their parents remain blissfully untouched by the forces of history, the children hear the whispers of what is to come.

Kushner's first novel is a tour de force, haunting and compelling, with the urgency of a telex from a forgotten time and place.

Chapters

  • 001 TelexFromCuba Title

    Duration: 34s
  • 002 TelexFromCuba Prologue

    Duration: 04min
  • 003 TelexFromCuba Ch1

    Duration: 01h14min
  • 004 TelexFromCuba Ch2

    Duration: 16min
  • 005 TelexFromCuba Ch3

    Duration: 36min
  • 006 TelexFromCuba Ch4

    Duration: 35min
  • 007 TelexFromCuba Ch5

    Duration: 10min
  • 008 TelexFromCuba Ch6

    Duration: 56min
  • 009 TelexFromCuba Ch7

    Duration: 12min
  • 010 TelexFromCuba Ch8

    Duration: 49min
  • 011 TelexFromCuba Ch9

    Duration: 12min
  • 012 TelexFromCuba Ch10

    Duration: 42min
  • 013 TelexFromCuba Ch11

    Duration: 05min
  • 014 TelexFromCuba Ch12

    Duration: 22min
  • 015 TelexFromCuba Ch13

    Duration: 15min
  • 016 TelexFromCuba Ch14

    Duration: 01h05min
  • 017 TelexFromCuba Ch15

    Duration: 48min
  • 018 TelexFromCuba Ch16

    Duration: 01min
  • 019 TelexFromCuba Ch17

    Duration: 31min
  • 020 TelexFromCuba Ch18

    Duration: 59min
page 1 from 2