the black cathedral a novel marcial gala

They honor the country’s political history whenever possible, undoing the classical divide between religion and revolution. “The Black Cathedral,” evocative of the Cuban films of Sara Gómez and Humberto Solás, shows the Sacramentalists to be savvy politicians.

The novel’s form isn’t its only radical quality. Taken together, they represent a cubist inquest into the soul of Cienfuegos. This chaotic, democratic bricolage - each voice vulgar and vulnerable in its own way - styles the novel as a series of interviews. Its narrators, more than a dozen in number, are usually granted a page at a time before other characters butt in, pick up the thread or offer their own spin on the same series of events. “The temple is like an open hand everyone can hold.” These lines double as a description of the novel, which takes the form of an oral history. “The concept is accessibility, permission,” the architect brought onto Arturo’s project explains. Indeed, “The Black Cathedral” forms part of a trilogy called “Cienfuegos, Capital of the World.” Even as the novel charts the voyages of its vagabonds, it represents an attempt to draw the periphery into the center, steering us toward the provinces as it renovates the Cuban novel. With names like Nacho Fat-Lips, Guts, Gringo and el Ruso, its dramatis personae introduce us to the demimonde of Cienfuegos - a place that, in Gala’s imaginings, rivals Havana in terms of intrigue. Accidental cannibals, tenderhearted killers, angst-ridden ghosts and well-behaved artists soon populate its topsy-turvy universe. Meanwhile, the cathedral, once a beacon of progress, remains an empty shell, haunting and taunting its residents as a symbol of modern Cuba’s social malaise.

Within the novel’s opening pages, his son splits open his neighbor’s head with a book, and this incident - demonstrating one of literature’s least appreciated uses - is a harbinger of the violence to come.

But his benedictions can’t save the city, and the family’s arrival christens one of its darkest chapters. Arturo Stuart, a Sacramentalist preacher, kicks off the action by moving his family to the Cuban city of Cienfuegos, where he’s been called by God to erect a fortress to his faith.Īrturo is part caricature (“Blessings” is his preferred greeting) and all charisma: The congregation soars from 20 to nearly a thousand because of him. The cathedral at the heart of Marcial Gala’s new novel does precisely none of these things, but, then again, virtue was never really on the mind of its visionary founder. A “virtuous” structure, according to John Ruskin, must “act well, and do the things it was intended to do in the best way.” It must “speak well, and say the things it was intended to say in the best words.” It must also “look well, and please us by its presence, whatever it has to do or say.”

The black cathedral a novel marcial gala