The Color of Summer, Or, The New Garden of Earthly Delights

Book excerpt: Arenas's finest comic achievement is also the fulfillment of his life's work, the Pentagonia, a five-volume cycle of autobiographical novels he began writing in his early twenties. Although it is the penultimate installment in his "secret history of Cuba," it was, in fact, the last book Arenas wrote before his death in 1990. A tale of survival by wits and wit, this is ultimately a powerful and passionate story about the triumph of the human spirit over the forces of political and sexual repression.--From publisher description.