Thine is the Kingdom [Paperback]

Abilio Estevez (Author), David L. Frye (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 12, 2000

Reading Abilio Est+¬vez's Thine Is the Kingdom is a little like attending a cocktail party blindfolded: a million conversations are all happening at the same time and you have to work to figure out just who's talking. But this remarkable novel out of Cuba is worth the extra effort. Set in a run-down enclave of pre-Castro Havana known as the Island, the story follows the fortunes of its residents through a magical realist dreamscape of fantasy, history, life, death, love, and the weather. There is the crazy Barefoot Countess; the pastry vendor, Merengue; and the bookstore owner Rolo. There is Miss Berta who lives with her always sleeping 90-year-old mother, Dona Juana, and Irene who lives with her not-yet-out-of-the-closet gay son, Lucio. Professor Kingston, the Jamaican English teacher; Casta Diva, a would-be opera singer; Chavito, the carver of poor imitations of classical statues; Vido, the adolescent voyeur; Mercedes and her blind sister Marta who dreams of Florence--the cast is enormous and cacophonous. The book hopscotches among characters, tenses, first-, second-, and third-person narratives--often within the same paragraph--as Est+¬vez plunges us headlong into the inner thoughts, dreams, and fears of his multitude of dramatis personae:On this page it is best to use the future tense, a generally inadvisable practice. It has already been written that Chacho had gotten back from Headquarters just past four in the afternoon, and that he was the first to notice the coming storm.... The following day, after the events that will soon be narrated had taken place, Chacho will begin to talk less, and less, and less, until he decides to take to bed.... And, as it is best not to abuse this generally inadvisable tense, it is just and proper that we leave Chacho to his silence until such a time as he should reappear, as God wills it, in this narration.In less accomplished hands this hodgepodge of voices, narrative threads, and personalities might have added up to literary bedlam. But there is method in Est+¬vez's madness as the story gradually emerges; in the meantime the sheer force of his prose and sly commentary on his own inventions carry the reader through this brilliant debut by one of Cuba's best and brightest new voices. --Alix Wilber

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Reading Abilio Estévez's Thine Is the Kingdom is a little like attending a cocktail party blindfolded: a million conversations are all happening at the same time and you have to work to figure out just who's talking. But this remarkable novel out of Cuba is worth the extra effort. Set in a run-down enclave of pre-Castro Havana known as the Island, the story follows the fortunes of its residents through a magical realist dreamscape of fantasy, history, life, death, love, and the weather. There is the crazy Barefoot Countess; the pastry vendor, Merengue; and the bookstore owner Rolo. There is Miss Berta who lives with her always sleeping 90-year-old mother, Dona Juana, and Irene who lives with her not-yet-out-of-the-closet gay son, Lucio. Professor Kingston, the Jamaican English teacher; Casta Diva, a would-be opera singer; Chavito, the carver of poor imitations of classical statues; Vido, the adolescent voyeur; Mercedes and her blind sister Marta who dreams of Florence--the cast is enormous and cacophonous. The book hopscotches among characters, tenses, first-, second-, and third-person narratives--often within the same paragraph--as Estévez plunges us headlong into the inner thoughts, dreams, and fears of his multitude of dramatis personae:

On this page it is best to use the future tense, a generally inadvisable practice. It has already been written that Chacho had gotten back from Headquarters just past four in the afternoon, and that he was the first to notice the coming storm.... The following day, after the events that will soon be narrated had taken place, Chacho will begin to talk less, and less, and less, until he decides to take to bed.... And, as it is best not to abuse this generally inadvisable tense, it is just and proper that we leave Chacho to his silence until such a time as he should reappear, as God wills it, in this narration.

In less accomplished hands this hodgepodge of voices, narrative threads, and personalities might have added up to literary bedlam. But there is method in Estévez's madness as the story gradually emerges; in the meantime the sheer force of his prose and sly commentary on his own inventions carry the reader through this brilliant debut by one of Cuba's best and brightest new voices. --Alix Wilber --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Although Estevez's (Manual of Temptations; Game with Gloria) transfixing tour-de-force takes place on an enclave?called the Island?in the center of Havana, it reads much like a journey around the world. Estevez interweaves sequences?a tale of incestuous siblings, a family's adoption of a wounded orphan, vivid glimpses of Havana nightlife, an ensemble of intense characters, the narrator/author's kvetching relationship with his own characters?into a novel that entices readers gently forward with the promise of one tantalizing mini-narrative after another. Just as a small but imposing door divides the Island and the outside world, called The Beyond, the Island's inhabitants try without success to protect themselves from the sublime, unknowable forces governing the territory. Estevez blends Greek myths, biblical tales and literary citations into his own historical mythos. Expressions of abject sorrow, cries of great passion and a quote from George Sand or Rilke may inhabit a single sentence. Allusions abound, arrayed with the complexity and poise of Joyce or Pound. The book consistently throws story-telling and character-crafting?indeed, even the assumed relationship of the reader to the author?into question. After an eerie sequence involving the incestuous lovers, Estevez asks: "Did you like it? No, it's a fake story, too melodramatic, too graphic, sounds like it was told by a southern writer from the United States." This novel ends with an original combination of satire and apocalypse, adding a dark cast to the preceding whimsy. The many small plots operating in this impressive montage are tempered, though not tamed, by the author's insistence on questioning his own?and the reader's?narrative assumptions.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing (January 12, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559705043
• ISBN-13: 978-1559705042
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,809,425 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars well..., November 13, 2004

By 

C. M. Padron (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Thine is the Kingdom (Hardcover)

If you like sweeping dream-logic novels, can follow narrative hops from one character to another, and weave divergent threads together to create a multi-hued "whoe", you might like this. If you enjoy the technical aspects of a story as much as a the story itself, you might like this. If you think you might like a story about an entire island, you might like this. If you are looking for a straight foward story about one thing, then you'll hate it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magical realism for the 21st century, December 15, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Thine is the Kingdom (Paperback)

This novel maybe too intellectual or too "artistic" for many readers, but for those who are drawn under its spell (and not turned off by its sometimes raw sexuality) it is entirely engrossing. Here are some quotes from mainstream reviews:

"It probably flatters diehard magical realists who have preceded Abilio Estevez that this young Cuban writer has tried to perpetuate more than just a hint of a Marquezian style and view of the world that by many readers' standards has grown a little long in the tooth. That said, it must be added that there are few magical realists who can lay claim to the sustained and complex weave of storytelling, mythicizing, theatrical asides, and outright theorizing that characterize Thine Is the Kingdom.... The reader must commend the novel's translator, David Frye, for his masterful transformation of the complex Spanish prose into an equally complex and convincing English. A lesser transformation could have rendered the work nearly unreadable, but the art is apparent on every page.... This is Abilio Estevez's first novel, and it is a remarkable achievement. He has confidently merged views of art, society, and politics in an ingenious creation." (World Literature Today, Winter 2000, review by Leland Guyer.)

"Estévez's prose is rich with allusions to art and literature, and in David Frye's translation it rolls in lucid, rhythmic waves. The disembodied, dreamlike narrative serves its purpose: Estévez immerses us in history in order to transcend it, shuffles the temporal in order to suggest the eternal. As for the mixed identities of the multiple narrative voices, Estévez explicitly invokes that eternal tale-teller herself, Scheherazade. The freedom of art is set against the confinement of political and geographic realities." (New York Times review, April 4, 1999, by Jon Gareick.)

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars what happened here?, August 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Thine is the Kingdom (Paperback)

I was hoping that it wasn't just me. I've started this book 4 times now and just can seem to make any sense of it. On the cover it sounds great, but I was thinking the same thing as the other reviewer....that there must have been something lost in the translation from Spanish to English.