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Paradiso

  • José Lezama Lima

4.00

1 ratings

Paradiso is a novel by Cuban writer José Lezama Lima, the only one completed and published during his lifetime. Written in an elaborately baroque style, the narrative follows the childhood and youth of José Cemí, and depicts many scenes which resonate with Lezama's own life as a young poet in Havana. Many of the characters reappear in Lezama's posthumous novel Oppiano Licario, which was published in Mexico in 1977.

The novel relates Cemí's struggles with a mysterious childhood illness, describes the death of his father, and explores his homosexuality and literary sensibilities. He lives in the world of pre-Castro Havana, and the Cuban Revolution only appears as a secondary plot. Some of the later chapters incorporate narrative experiments in which several alternating stories, set during widely divergent eras and having no immediately apparent connection with José Cemí, are interwoven and eventually merged. (In a letter to Julio Cortázar, Lezama explained that these chapters represent Cemí's dreams after the death of his father.) Because of the graphic homosexual scenes and the novel's ambivalence towards the political situation of the day, Paradiso encountered controversy and publication problems. Today it is widely read in the Spanish-speaking world but has not achieved the same fame in English-speaking countries despite a translation by Gregory Rabassa.

Despite having written one of the most accomplished novels in Cuba's history, Lezama said he never considered himself a novelist, but rather a poet who wrote a poem that became a novel. Paradiso can thus be considered a kind of long poem, just as well as a neo-baroque novel.

Genres

  • Fathers
  • Death
  • Fiction
  • LGBTQ novels before Stonewall
  • Fiction, general
  • Romance literature
  • Spanish fiction
  • Translations
  • Cuban fiction
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About the author

  • José Lezama Lima

    4.00

    1 ratings · 51 works

Editions

  • Edition cover

    Suhrkamp

    June 1, 1997

  • Edition cover

    Spanish Edition edition

    Catedra "General Casta~nos" Region Militar Su

    June 30, 2003

  • Edition cover

    Alianza

    January 1, 1983

  • Edition cover

    Ίνδικτος

    2002

Edition cover

Univ of Pittsburgh Pr (Txt)

December 1988

  • Edition cover

    Alianza, Alianza Editorial

    May 31, 2018

  • Edition cover

    Alianza, Alianza Editorial

    May 31, 2018

  • Edition cover

    Alianza, Alianza Editorial

    Mar 07, 2011

  • Edition cover

    Farrar, Straus and Giroux

    1974

  • Edition cover

    ALLCA XX

    1996

  • Edition cover

    1st Dalkey Archive ed.

    Dalkey Archive Press

    2000

  • Edition cover

    Seuil

    February 2, 1999

  • Edition cover

    Cátedra

    1980

  • Edition cover

    Farrar, Straus and Giroux

    1974

  • Edition cover

    Edaf

    January 2003

  • Edition cover

    Editorial Fundamentos

    1993

  • Edition cover

    Ed. critica, 1. edition

    Allca XX Ericaine

    January 1994

  • Edition cover

    Ediciones ERA

    January 1, 2006

  • Edition cover

    2a ed.

    Era

    1970

  • Edition cover

    Penguin Random House

    1974

  • Edition cover

    Linkgua Ediciones, S.L.

    2014

  • Edition cover

    Seuil

    1984

  • Edition cover

    3. ed / revisada por el autor y al cuidado de Julio Cortázar y Carlos Monsiváis.

    Ediciones Era

    1973

  • Edition cover

    Ediciones Paradiso

    1968

  • Edition cover

    Farrar, Straus and Giroux

    1974

  • Edition cover

    Segunda edición

    Espiral/Fundamentos

    1976

  • Edition cover

    [Ed. rev

    Biblioteca Era

    1968

  • Edition cover

    Farrar, Straus and Giroux

    1974

  • Edition cover

    Éditions du Seuil

    1971

  • Edition cover

    Farrar, Straus and Giroux

    1968

  • Edition cover

    Biblioteca Era

    1968

  • Edition cover

    Editorial Letras Cubanas

    1991

  • Edition cover

    Alianza, Era

    1983

  • Edition cover

    1st University of Texas Press ed.

    University of Texas Press

    1988

  • Edition cover

    U[nión] N[acional de] E[scritores y] A[rtistas de] C[uba

    1966

  • Edition cover

    1. ed.

    Bruguera

    1985

  • Edition cover

    Ed. crítica, 1. ed. / Cintio Vitier, coordinador.

    ALLCA XX, Université Paris X, Centre de recherches latino-américaines, Fondo de Cultura Económica

    1993

  • Edition cover

    [4. ed.

    Ediciones de la Flor

    1972

  • Edition cover

    Ediciones de la Flor

    1968

  • Edition cover

    Editorial Fundamentos

    1974

  • Edition cover

    [2. ed.]

    Ediciones Era

    1970