uno de esos libros que cuando empiesas no puedes parar hasta que no lo termines.muy bueno

Es un buen libro que te sumergue una y otra vez en el mundo que se inventa una muchacha entre Paris y La Habana, tratando de sobrevivir a esa conflictiva y hermosa etapa de la vida que es la adolecencia. LLeno de bellas metáforas, aunque a veces excesivas, nos conduce por sus paginas añorando a su padre y relatandonos en los tonos de azul con que juega sus relaciones amorosas y su niñez en Cuba.

It is a good book that you sumergue an and another time in the world that a girl is invented between Paris and Havana, trying to survive that conflicting and beautiful stage of the life that is the puberty. Full with beautiful metaphors, although sometimes excessive, it drives us for their you paginate missing their father and relating us in the tones of blue with which it plays their loving relationships and their childhood in Cuba.

Es un libro, magico como su titulo, recomendable para cualquiera que le guste soñar y viajar a traves de la palabras...

Zoe Valdes was born in Cuba in 1959 and fled to France in 1995. Overnight, she has vaulted to the first rank of contemporary Latin American novelists. "Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada" (Arcade Publishing: 1997) was her first novel published in English. "I Gave You All I Had" (Arcade Publishing: 1999), which existed in manuscript as early as 1995, and "My Father's Foot" (Planeta: 2002) have recently added to her reputation.

Told in the first person, "Yocandra" is a brief, rich, wrenching, serio-comic, episodic, film-influenced, belle-lettristic piece of performance art, in which the narrator's voice is, happily, always present.

Thrust out of a magic-realist Purgatory in a cycle of petition and rejection, Yocandra is confined to Castro's Cuba. A person's name may be important, but apparently not in Cuba. Yocandra exchanges one name, the name of her country, for the name of a muse in a failed effort to buy love. All of the other major characters in the book lack proper names. Her two lovers bear nicknames -- the Traitor and the Nihilist -- which reflect their relationship to the Cuban state. Like characters in a Bergman film, they meet and play a game of chess together while Yocandra suffers a spiritual crisis. Her father, a Communist Party hack, destroys a treasure trove of homoerotic art because it offends his orthodox machismo views. Her girlfriend, the Worm, escapes to Spain, where her life with a belching fat man becomes as strained as that of a character in an Almodovar film. Yocandra's lost love, the Lynx, stumbles upon a nighttime sailing expedition to Miami, willingly joins in, and alone survives a storm when he lashes himself to stray timber and floats free.

This is a Cuba in which Communist ideology and bureaucracy have bred poverty, corruption, and disconnects in the extreme. In the background of Yocandra's story, neighborhood vigilantes search excrement-strewn dumpsters for signs of political disloyalty, bicyclists who pedal to forget are branded loose women, the data entry clerk at Yocandra's literary journal creates her database anew each day when the power cuts out before she saves her work, everyone barters everything of value for what passes for food, and the sea pounds relentlessly and the sun continues hypnotically to shine.

Sex plays a prominent part in "Yocandra." (Valdes has said that, growing up fatherless and without money in Cuba, she had sex instead of toys.) Devotees of erotic fiction told from a woman's perspective may appreciate the clinical description of Yocandra's lovemaking with the Nihilist, whose perfect body includes a perfectly used thirteen-inch tool. But if the scene is erotic, it is not because there is any affection, much less love, passing between the two. Sex without love -- like literature without words, pride without accomplishment, work without labor, birth without creation -- is a staple of Yocandra's daily life in Cuba.

This is a provocative book, written with style by an author to contend with.

Zoe Valdes has been able to articulate, in a literary fasion, what I have sought to do for the last five years since I spent a year a half in Cuba and left unable to express what I had seen, heard and experienced. She highlights the contradictions brilliantly, illustrates how the regime has suppressed individuality and personal initiative and has produced an island of crazy old fools, (like her mother) men who can only repeat the same paranoid line over and over, (like the great leader) hyper-sexualized youth, (what else is there to do? How else to relax?) prostitutes, prisoners, young people for whom the threat of sharks and drowning is better than staying on the island, the wretching pain of losing all your friends to exile, the Hernia (what a great metaphor!). There is so much in this little book -- I would like to re-read it, and recommend it to anyone who wants to know what life is like on the island in this decade. This book, reflecting life in Cuba, is very, very sad and somewhat hopeless yet it must be read.

Vrlo interesantna knjiga koju bih preporucila najpre zenskoj publici. Nabijena erotikom, puna emocija ljubavi i besa. Upoznajte kako se zivi na Kubi.

A sweet and sour combination of fun and tragedy, of sick humor and light reading, a 90 % of fantastic tales with a 10% of real historical background. One thing I surely loved: Zoé continues to spice her writing with colloquialisms, vulgarisms and Cubanisms and that makes one want to read more from her. The miracle in her book happens in and to Miami, but the fact of the matter is that Miami has been a true miracle in the USA: a place where Cuban immigrants have turned an obscure, marshy land-ridden spot in the United States into one of the most flourishing economic places and melting pots in the whole world. Zoé develops her story for the first time in the second homeland of all Cubans: South Florida, specifically Miami [although she prefers to live in France] and the result is quite good. The puns with the names reminds one of Cabrera Infante. The whole story knitting is just hers.

I must disagree with most of the others' comments about this book. I did not find it to be a good read for me. I found it to be very difficult. The style of writing was quite flighty & I often got lost. It felt to me as though the writer was trying too hard - Plain and simple. I didn't bond with the development of the characters at all. I am a huge book fan, and this just doesn't cut it. I suggest reading "Caramelo" instead, by Sandra Cisneros.

When I started reading this novel (the writer was recommended to me by my Spanish teacher), I said wow, this is a female counterpart of the Cuban writer Pedro Juan Gutierrez (I recommend his novel Dirty Havana Trilogy), but after promising start, it quickly became boring and trivial. It seems that in the second half of the book the writer completely lost the concept and her blind hatred of the Cuban regime prevailed over her artistic intentions. The book reads like political (anti)propaganda from a bitter pessimist in the exile. Disappointing!

I easily became confused due to the author's abrupt change of narrator from chapter to chapter. Although the storyline was interesting, I did not enjoy the interrupting recipes and such. I also became frustrated with the endless talk of XXL. I did not understand the importance of him in the book. It was difficult reading. I suggest you try for yourself and if anybody understands the underlying meaning of this book PLEASE email Me! I would love to know.

Te muestra la realidad cubana, la que muchos desconocen y otros se niegan a aceptar. Es una alerta para mi pais.

I read this book in April 2001 in my visit to Cuba . I found it interesting . The misery before and after the revolution is well present . But also the strength and the pride of the Cuban people . Following the life and the loves of a woman during her entire life , one can feel that hunger and despair already existed well before Fidel Castro . The only new thing after the Revolution is the lack of liberty . The will of that woman to fight against all the difficulties is well told to us through comical situations , where the Cuban music always plays its role .

Aunque la trama de la novela no es muy convincente, la realidad de la vida en Cuba antes, durante y despues del triunfo de la revolucion Castrista a travez de la vida de Cuca Martinez y aquellas personas que se entrelazan con ella. Muy bueno leerlo para aquellos que conocen muy de cerca la verdad que envuelve Cuba, su gente y su regimen.

Es una lectura excitante; lloras, ries y te sonrojas. El contenido es crudo. La realidad contemporanea cubana es asi y esa es Zoe. No obstante, le da esperanzas al que ha pasado por todo eso y concluye con un "there's always tomorrow".

Café Nostalgia está más allá de la política. Café Nostalgia narra, simplemente, una historia sobre seres humanos y no sobre el partido que éstos militan (porque los cubanos son, también, seres humanos, y no sólo organismos vivos que deben definir su posición política constantemente). El contexto, para bien o para mal, es insoslayable. En ese sentido: contexto e historia, realidad y ficción, ésta obra resulta espasmódicamente real y poética. Es la pequeña historia de cada cubano, no importa del bando del que esté o haya estado. Es la agridulce crónica de cada "aquel-isleño" que ha visto partir, uno tras otro, desperdigándose por el planeta, a todos sus amigos. Y de aquellos que, en otra tierra, no logran quitarse de encima esa manía de extrañar la isla de la que, a pesar de todas las carencias (materiales y espirituales), guardan los mejores momentos.

Cuba no es sólo un contratupunto entre Revolución y "gusanería". Cuba también es su gente: un pueblo normal y común, con sus achaques y virtudes, que ríe y padece, que goza y se lamenta. Que vive y ejerce su derecho a ser humano. Quien encuentre en éste volumen sólo una crítica al régimen, está leyendo con los ojos de la predisposición y es, por tanto, parte del mismo juego. Está en definitiva más politizado que como quiere hacer parecer a su autora. Quién califique este libro de panfleto carece de la más elemental sensibilidad. No entiende que lee sobre el dolor de la soledad y la lejanía; sobre la esperanza que, aunque la pinten de verde, se va marchitando con la nostalgia. No comprende que en el fondo es un canto, con la voz áspera y grosera, gastada por el desaliento, a la amistad. A la amistad sin condiciones, que es más fuerte que la distancia, la política y el desarraigo.

La amistad que, por fortuna, no se desinfla.

El libro es excelente aunque el lenguaje que se usa será facilmente entendido solo por aquellos nacidos y criados en Cuba o entre cubanos. El lenguaje es muy típico, casi folklórico difícil de entender para otras personas que hablan castellano. Lo de la realidad cubana, muy bien plasmada, sufrimientos, miserias y frustraciones del diario acontecer habanero son sin duda alguna reales, me consta por que yo tambien los viví. Felicitaciones Zoe, te la comistes.

Zoé Valdés' book gives a new perspective of the erotic workings in a woman's mind. She fuses the harsh political and cultural reality of modern Cuba, with a realm of characters both endearing and pathetic. Each character has a stereotypical nickname, "el nihilista", etc. I love the language, raw, crude and downright gross at times. Valdés' is not afraid to spell out sex, in a way women in latinamerica are normally censured for. The story is short and entertaining. In fact I gave it to a friend that says he hates reading, and he told me he couldn't put it down until he finished the last page. I foresee Valdés' rise as one of the new voices of the post=modernist female literature genre.

El libro se trata de una mujer cubana buscando forma de vivir los frutos de la herencia de una revolucion al que ella nunca pertenecio. Encuentra solamente promesas vacias y una vida llena de nada. No hay diferencia entre vivir y sobrevivir. Quizas gente consiga su escritura ofensiva porque no esconde ningun detalle en sus descripciones, pero estas descripciones son necesarias. El libro no tendria la fuerza que tiene sin el famoso capitulo ocho. En pocas paginas llega a explicar tanto lo social como lo personal para una ciudadana cubana durante el periodo especial con el sabor de escritor exiliado. Perfecto para cualquiera que quiera aprender algo sobre el sentimiento de alguien que vivio la Cuba despues de que se acabaron todos los suenos revolucionarios y lo unico que sobro fue una isla a la deriva. El final deja a uno con sentimientos incompletos, pero cualquiera que sepa algo de literatura va a captar que esta es la mision de la autora. No habia final al tunel en que Cuba se encontraba en esa epoca. El libro es una joya para literatura moderna latinoamericana.

Para mi fue una experiencia interezante leer este libro. para los que han vivido en situaciones similares (apagones, escaces,desespero e incertidumbre del manana) le resulta sumamente chistoso e increible las situaciones que aunque pueden parecer absurdas son reales. Creo que Zoe no pudo ser mas realista. Es un libro realmente interezante que te permite conocer parte de la historia en que Cuba vive actualmente sin mentiras ni tabues..

Writing a novel about present day Havana where Danae, a dissatisfied housewife and mother leaves her husband to find her first love, is a great idea. Telling the story from various inanimate objects is a clever way to tell the story from an omniscient narrator. But something gets lost in the process and Valdes takes just a bit too long to tell us their love story. I was able to read 100 pages in one sitting, but I was unable to finish it.

Luego de leer La Nada Cotidiana y Te Di La Vida Entera, esperaba mucho mas de este libro de cuentos cortos. En lugar de publicarlos debio dejarlas para su uso personal, como una especie de dialogo interno. Solo ella sabe lo que quiso decir en muchas partes del libro, y honestamente no habia llegado a la mitad cuando ya estaba aburrida del mismo. La narrativa captura la atencion del lector en las primeras paginas, y despues se pierde el hilo, sin contar que los personajes estan pobremente definidos. A Valdes le gusta chocar a sus lectores con sus imagenes, hacerlos pensar,pero esta vez la formula no fue efectiva.