Join us for an evening with major Puerto Rican provocateur writer of genre fiction Pedro Cabiya. Cabiya will be launching his novel Tercer Mundo, as well as reading from his “zombie novel” Wicked Weeds (translated from the Spanish by Jessica Powell), which has been translated into English and was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award.
Tercer Mundo: Orishas, saints, luases, demons and angels frolic in a fantastic Puerto Rico that only the fertile imagination of Pedro Cabiya could have conceived. Antagonistic ministries in the bureaucracy of the Multiverse compete to recover the valuable contraband contained in a spaceship that has crashed in Santurce, capital of the Borikwá Republic… but claiming that treasure will not be as easy as all that. Political satire and cosmic parody combine in a web of espionage and high adventure where the great questions of existence share space with the most profane humor. Prequel to his immensely popular novel Trance, Tercer Mundo promises, like its predecessor, to be hard to put down.
Wicked Weeds: A Caribbean zombie—smart, gentlemanly, financially independent, and a top executive at an important pharmaceutical company—becomes obsessed with finding the formula that would reverse his condition and allow him to become “a real person.” In the process, three of his closest collaborators (cerebral and calculating Isadore, wide-eyed and sentimental Mathilde, and rambunctious Patricia), guide the reluctant and baffled scientist through the unpredictable intersections of love, passion, empathy, and humanity. But the playful maze of jealousy and amorous intrigue that a living being would find easy to negotiate represents an insurmountable tangle of dangerous ambiguities for our “undead” protagonist. Wicked Weeds is put together from Isadore’s scrapbook, where she has collected her boss’ scientific goals and existential agony, as well as her own reflections about growing up as a Haitian descendant in the Dominican Republic and what it really means to be human. The end result is a precise combination of Caribbean noir and science-fiction, Latin American style.
Pedro Cabiya is the author of twelve books and more than a hundred essays and articles. He is one of the most widely read writers in the Hispanic Caribbean. His work has been recognized by the Pen Club, the Institute of Puerto Rican Literature and the Association of Dominican Writers and Journalists. In 2014 he was awarded the prestigious Caonabo de Oro for excellence in letters, a distinction he shares with Juan Bosch, Pedro Mir, Julia Álvarez and Luis Rafael Sánchez, among others. He has participated in numerous international anthologies and his open letters, op-eds and columns on politics, religion, human rights, art and science regularly become viral phenomena. His most notable books include Trance, La cabeza, Historias tremendas, Historias atroces and Malas hierbas; the latter won the Foreword INDIES Best Science Fiction / Fantasy Book Award in 2016 and was published in English as Wicked Weeds by Mandel-Vilar Press. His novel Reinbou is now a major motion picture.
Jessica Powell, a translator, holds a PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has published numerous translations of Latin American authors, including Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Jorge Luis Borges, César Vallejo, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Silvina Ocampo, Edgardo Rivera Martínez, María Moreno, Edmundo Paz-Soldán, Liliana Heer, Alan Pauls, and Anna Lidia Vega Serova.