Paradiso     by José Lezama Lima, Translated by Gregory Rabassa Original title: Paradiso Published by Dalkey Archive Press Pub. Date: December 1, 1999 Format: Paperback, 478 pages ISBN: 156478228X List Price: $14.50 buy now directly from the publisher Free Shipping Worldwide

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A classic of modern literature, Paradiso was first published in Cuba in 1966 and quickly hailed as a masterpiece by such eminent writers as Julio Cortazar and Mario Vargas Llosa. Written by Cuba's most important poet, it tells the story of Jose Cemi , who, in the wake of his father's premature death, comes of age in Cuba, "an island paradise where magic and philosophy twist the lives of the old Cuban bourgeoisie into extravagant wonderful shapes" (Washington Post ).

Weaving the exhilarations and defeats of love into extraordinarily erotic verbal tapestries, Lezama Lima narrates Cemi's search for his dead father and for the understanding of love and the powers of the mind.

Both an archetype and a cosmos of Cuban society, Paradiso is as perceptive and psychologically intricate as Proust's view of France, and as vigorous and sometimes corroded as Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County.

"Lezama Lima has aptly been called 'A Proust of the Caribbean.'. . . Paradiso triumphs as a work of pure aestheticism, of absolute digression and linguistic tour de force."—Nation

"Paradiso has the 'leaps of imagination' which have come to associated with the best contemporary Spanish literature."—Jack Friedman, Village Voice

"An extraordinary novel written by Cuba's leading poet. . . . A masterpiece of the modern Spanish Baroque. . . . For me, the proof of the greatness of Paradiso is that for the last two weeks I've been walking around New York seeing things through Lezama's eyes."—Edmund White, New York Times

"Lezama Lima . . . advances with a giant stride into the forefront of a group of prominent Latin American writers, alongside Garcia Marquez and Cabrera Infante. . . . A panoramic novel of Cuban life . . . Paradiso is tantalizing, heady reading in this brilliant translation."—Library Journal

"Splendidly translated by Gregory Rabassa."—Publishers Weekly

"A crucial figure in modern Latin American letters."—Hispanic Review

"The Henri Rousseau of the Latin American Boom."—Gustavo Pellon, Jose Lezama Lima's Joyful Vision: A Study of Paradiso and Other Prose Works