Walking towards tragedy, to the beat of Caribbean trova.
Beto Milanés is a Cuban exiled soldier living in Florida, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after surviving an ambush in Angola 18 years before. The memory of this massacre drives him to madness and obsession, triggering a dangerous crisis.
Meanwhile, a series of events are taking place. A Cuban police officer decides to ask for forgiveness from his only son. Three of the brightest students in their class decide to go out and buy beer to celebrate their graduation. A Mexican prostitute goes out to find clients. An elderly pharmacist takes his dog for a walk. A Texan man is beaten at a bar. All these stories converge on what will become a fateful Saturday of 1994.
The lives of each of these characters are affected by the madness of Beto Milanés, who is desperately seeking for someone to end his existence.
RELEVANT INFORMATION: Caracol Beach won the first Alfaguara Prize for Novel. It is a thriller filled with drama, madness, love, and plenty of humor, with the musicality of Silvio Rodríguez’s songs and Cuban trova.
The novel has been translated into English, Turkish, and Greek.
Eliseo Alberto was a Cuban journalist, novelist, poet, and screenwriter. He received the National Critic’s Prize of Cuba, the International Alfaguara Prize for Novel, and the Circle of Film Writers’ Medal for Best Original Screenplay for Guantanamera.
What the critics have said:
“With bold and always surprising language, [Eliseo Alberto] creates a destiny in which chance constantly disrupts the smoothness of the everyday. A group of characters, either completely innocent or completely guilty, goes mad in the face of the grayness of reality, leading to a story of violence, injustice, and madness that reinvents and updates the forms of the great classical tragedy, a perfect metaphor for the end of the century.” Jury of the Alfaguara Prize for Novel 1998
“Caracol Beach is a novel for eternity.” Sergio Ramírez
AUDIOVISUAL POTENTIAL: TV Series, Miniseries, Film, TV Movie.
LANGUAGES AVAILABLE: Spanish, English, Turkish, Slovenian, and Greek.
