Padilla, Heberto

New York. 1984. April 1984. Farrar Straus Giroux. Proof Copy. Very Good in Wrappers. 0374169829. Translated from the Spanish by Andrew Hurley. 250 pages. paperback. Photo (c) 1984 by Joyce Ravid. Jacket design (c) 1984 by Fred Marcellino. keywords: Literature Translated Latin America Cuba . FROM THE PUBLISHER - Heberto Padilla's frankly autobiographical novel is the story of a writer who refuses to give over to the revolutionary state the power of his art. In the process, Heroes Are Grazing in My Garden paints an astonishingly realistic portrait of an idealist movement gone sour, and the lives of the men and women lost in the somber turn of the tide. A web of people-writers and writers manquë, sociologists and philosophers, bureaucrats and spiritualists-struggle to maintain some semblance of individualism in a system that is everywhere resistant to the individual. Nostalgic, erotic, political, and literary dreams form a counterplot, especially for the two central characters, Julio and Gregorio. Julio is a translator betrayed by the system he labored to build and by the wife he wooed through the revolution. Gregorio Suarez, trapped in a disappointing marriage, struggles to write the novel of Cuba while sinking deeper and deeper into a self-destructive alcoholism. Their lives touch in a mutual dream of frustration and aggression. Heberto Padilla offers here a stunning portrait of the once glamorous city of Havana in sharp counterpoint to the grinding drabness of its contemporary life. inventory #8655 ISBN: 0374169829.