Tentacle: Winner of the 2017 Grand Prize of the Association of Caribbean Writers

Tentacle: Winner of the 2017 Grand Prize of the Association of Caribbean Writers

by Rita Indiana (Author)

Synopsis

Plucked from her life on the streets of post-apocalyptic Santo Domingo, young maid Acilde Figueroa finds herself at the heart of a voodoo prophecy: only she can travel back in time and save the ocean - and humanity - from disaster. But first she must become the man she always was - with the help of a sacred anemone. Tentacle is an electric novel with a big appetite and a brave vision, plunging headfirst into questions of climate change, technology, Yoruba ritual, queer politics, poverty, sex, colonialism and contemporary art. Bursting with punk energy and lyricism, it's a restless, addictive trip: The Tempest meets the telenovela.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
Publisher: And Other Stories
Published: 07 Nov 2018

ISBN 10: 1911508342
ISBN 13: 9781911508342

Media Reviews
`Rita Indiana is fearless and brilliant and Tentacle is her finest novel, an unforgettable experience.' Junot Diaz'Indiana is truly a renaissance woman. Not only is she one of the most exciting Dominican authors in recent years, she is also a musical force to be reckoned with. [...] She's one of those rare artists whose music you can either dance to or sit down and listen to as if it were a great novel.' Alt.Latino, NPR.org`Reads like an extended song. . . . So fast-paced that it must be swallowed whole, for setting it aside is as dangerous as jumping from a speeding motorcycle.' El Pais on Papi`Rita Indiana is unclassifiable. Tentacle is a kind of pulp fiction for educated classes, a wild but carefully conceived combination of sci-fi adventure, art-world-cum-hipster-satire, eco- and socially-aware thriller, with a work of Caribbean studies breaking in from the side. It works. The tone is cool and nonchalant. The characters achieve that; the author never intrudes between them and us ... When the denouement comes it is brutal and irresistibly attractive.'Judith von Sternburg, Frankfurter Rundschau `Merengue star Indiana knows how to get things dancing. Her literary tricks come from the oral traditions of voodoo and Santeria. Many of Tentacle's characters are reincarnations of earlier lives and linked to those lives. In this way she infects the visible world with the invisible world.' Ralph Hammerthaler, Suddeutsche Zeitung `Rita Indiana is comfortable with the language of modern technology, but her joy in storytelling, the effervescence of her imagination and the way she wraps stories within stories are all firmly part of a Latin American tradition: Tentacle recalls important works from the sixties like Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.' Eva Karnofsky, Deutschlandfunk Radio `A great novel. There's so much in it: the history of the Dominican Republic, politics and of course religion. Music is referenced, and biology, conservationism too, and it's full of wit, thanks to the way Rita Indiana tells it.' SWR2 Radio
Author Bio
Rita Indiana is a Dominican music composer, producer and key figure in contemporary Caribbean literature; Tentacle won the Grand Prize of the Association of Caribbean Writers in 2017, the first Spanish-language book to do so. She is the author of three collections of stories and four novels, and is a driving force in experimental Dominican popular music along with her band, Rita Indiana y los Misterios. Achy Obejas is a writer, journalist and translator. She is the author of five books of fiction and has translated Junot Diaz and Wendy Guerra, among many others. She is from Cuba and lives in California.