Made in Saturn

Book excerpt: This is the story of the children of the revolution, of many revolutions. This is real life on a Caribbean island, in fact: on two islands. Argenis Luna is an artist who no longer paints, a heroin addict who no longer uses, and an overgrown child trying to make sense of his inheritance in the Dominican Republic, a country where his once-revolutionary father and his comrades are now part of the ruling elite. Thrown out of rehab in Havana, Argenis picks his way between his own crisis and the detritus of an abandoned generation in a series of highly charged encounters with drag queens, fellow artists, and the gleaming muscles of his former dealer. After the nightmare-ish hallucination of Tentacle, Rita Indiana's new novel strikes a mellower note as it conjures up this vivid world in all its beauty, love and corruption.