Sacrificio

April 1, 2022

In 1998 Havana, fresh-from-the-country Rafa, an African-Cuban orphan, falls in with his boss's son, Renato. Renato is the mastermind behind "Los Injected Ones," a group of young, HIV-positive counterrevolutionaries planning to overthrow the Castro government during Pope John Paul II's historic visit to Cuba, and his disappearance sets Rafa on a search through tourist hotels, an AIDS sanatorium, and finally the distinctively slapped-together slum that serves Los Injected Ones as home. From the Guant�namo-born, New York-based author of The Second Death of �nica Aveyano.

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July 4, 2022
Mestre-Reed (The Lazarus Rumba) returns after two decades with a bold and suspenseful story of resistance in late 1990s Cuba. Orphaned Rafa finds himself in the midst of would-be revolutionaries in Havana when Nicolás offers him a job at his mother’s restaurant and the two become boyfriends. Already HIV-positive, Nicolás is soon sent to a sidatorio, a government-run sanitarium for people carrying the virus. There, Nicolás starts a group attempting to incite a counterrevolution by encouraging people to inject themselves with infected blood to initiate mass illness all over the island. After Nicolás dies, his brother Renato, also HIV-positive, is sent to live in the same sidatorio; there, the charismatic Renato takes up the helm as leader of his brother’s counterrevolutionary group. When Renato goes missing, Rafa and a German man with questionable allegiances named Steffen go looking for him. It turns out Renato’s group has big plans for the Pope’s visit to Cuba; with the visit fast approaching, Rafa scrambles to make sense of what is going on around him and find his place in it. Populated by vivid characters (comandante Juan, the “bloated old Revolutionary Army crook”; Inocente St. Louis, the fire-eating chef; nihilistic Nicolás; dutiful-student-turned-revolutionary Renato), this tautly plotted story keeps the reader guessing until the end. Mestre-Reed succeeds at capturing life on the margins of Castro’s Cuba in this stirring tale. Agent: Jesseca Salky, Salky Literary.

September 15, 2022
Havana, 1997. Teenager Rafael has come to the capital to find work and a new life. He finds both when he meets Nicolas, and they quickly become lovers. Nicolas secures employment for Rafael as a waiter in his mother's small restaurant. There Rafael meets Nicolas' younger brother, Renato. Nicolas has AIDS, and Rafael is horrified when he witnesses the older brother inject Renato with his tainted blood. Soon HIV positive, Renato is remanded to a government institution for the infected. Once there, Renato, an insurrectionist, launches a quixotic campaign to discredit Castro's government. Soon, graffiti with the one word "Sacrificio" begins to appear everywhere, clearly the work of Renato's followers. But are they also responsible for the series of bombings that ensues? Mestre-Reed's novel is artfully written and gets high marks for its verisimilitude. Unfortunately, it is never quite clear exactly what Renato hopes to accomplish, and, frustratingly, narrator Rafael is usually the last to know. Nevertheless, the novel does offer a fascinating look at Castro's Cuba for those curious about the history of the island.

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Starred review from July 15, 2022
Mestre-Reed combines elements of a spy novel and political thriller with bleak, steely-eyed realism about Cuba in the 1990s. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of Soviet support, Cuba entered the "special period," which was marked by a sharp increase in poverty, a lack of basic goods and services, and deep uncertainty about the future of the country and the socialist dreams it was built on. Mestre-Reed explores this uncertain time while also telling a story about Cuba's underground gay and HIV-positive population. Rafa, who's come to Havana from rural eastern Cuba, goes home one night with a man named Nicol�s, becoming entwined with him, his brother, Renato, and their mother, Cecilia. The family runs a high-dollar but semilegal restaurant, or paladar, out of their home, catering to rich tourists who seek an "authentic" Cuban meal, and Rafa helps them wait tables. Soon, he falls into a passionate and tormented affair with Nicol�s that's intimate and yet hard to define for both parties. During the peak of the AIDS epidemic, Cuba established sidatorios, or sanitariums, which were mandatory for people who were HIV-positive. The novel opens after Nicol�s has been sent to a sidatorio and died, though no one knows where his body is. Renato also tests positive for HIV and is sent to the sidatorio but is allowed to leave on the weekends. Rafa and Renato are united in their grief for Nicol�s but also in their aimlessness; they spend their weekends together, wandering the city, looking for tourists to pick up, and roaming without much of a purpose. After a fateful encounter with an enigmatic German tourist, Rafa learns that Nicol�s and Renato had more secrets than he realized. Nicol�s was a member of "los injected ones," people so disillusioned with their country and their future that they purposefully infected themselves with HIV in a self-destructive act of protest. Now, this group is determined to overthrow the Castro government during Pope John Paul II's upcoming visit to Cuba. Rafa becomes a hesitant detective, more interested in learning about Nicol�s, Renato, and himself than in stopping the violent uprising. In this way, the book itself reflects the slow decay of ideals Mestre-Reed is exploring in the story. The novel's Cuba is full of dreaming, even delusional, idealists--whether it's the bureaucrats running the state, foreign tourists determined to overlook what's in front of them to see the picturesque Cuba of the mind, or erstwhile revolutionaries committed to any kind of change at any price. A compelling, melancholy novel that explores the beautiful rise and often violent breakdown of dreams, ideals, and love.

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