Publisher's Synopsis
The Stuart family moves to a marginal neighbourhood of Cienfuegos, a city on the southern coast of Cuba. Arturo Stuart, a charismatic, visionary preacher, discovers soon after arriving that God has given him a mission: to build a temple that surpasses any before seen in Cuba, and to make of Cienfuegos a new Jerusalem. In an area that roils with passions and conflicts, at the foot of a cathedral that rises higher day by day, there grows a generation marked by violence, cruelty, and extreme selfishness. This generation will carry these traits beyond the borders of the neighbourhood, the city, and the country, unable to escape the shadow of the unfinished cathedral. Told by a chorus of narrators who flirt, lie, argue, and finish one another's stories, Marcial Gala's 'The Black Cathedral' is a darkly comic indictment of modern Cuba, gritty and realistic but laced with magic.