Frederick A. de Armas

Presenta Sinfonía salvaje and El abra del Yumurí

Havana, July 26, 1959. The disoriented members of Cuba’s high society and petite bourgeoisie realize that their position, wealth, and even life are in danger. Frederick de Armas’ second novel Sinfonía salvaje (Savage Symphony, 2019) deals with panic, delirium, the immense possibilities that open and close, in a magical moment when everything changes. Struggling to preserve their values, privileges, and charm, three Cuban women, like silk worms, weave a new fabric, as fragile as their position in revolutionary Cuba.

Havana, 1958. When de Armas was a child, his mother, Ana Galdós, began writing a novel that she never finished. De Armas devoted several years to completing a book from his mother’s notes: El abra del Yumurí (roughly, The Yumurí River Gap, 2016). This novel captures the tensions of a critical moment in Cuban history, through the perspective of five women with very different goals, but who shape a similar story, a thread from which nobody can escape. It is a sort of murder mystery set in pre-Castro Cuba.

Dr. Frederick A. de Armas is Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Romance Languages ​​and Literatures and in Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago, where he researches Spanish literature of the Golden Age from a comparative point of view. He has been President of the Cervantes Society of America and President of the International Association Siglo de Oro (AISO). He has published more than twenty books.

This event is free and open to the public. The presentation will be in Spanish.
To confirm your attendance and for more information, please call (305) 348–1991 or write [email protected]
Cosponsored by FIU’s Cuban American Studies Association (CASA) · Modern Language Graduate Student Organization (MLGSO)