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“... and a readable piece on that fine but little-known writer Calvert Casey. Cabrera does praise Reinaldo Arenas, ‘the chronicler of a country ruled not by the already impotent Fidel Castro, but by sex’. He has to, because Arenas was also a rabid anti-Castrist, with an unhappy life on one margin after ...”

“... suggests that Fuentes might well find black comedy a congenial new territory. Born in 1943, Reinaldo Arenas is one of the expelled Marielitos who came over to the US in 1980. Farewell to the Sea is a massive extract from a five-part work in progress whose final scale will be Himalayan. It is subtitled ‘A Novel of Cuba’. In fact, it might more ...”

“... her companion. On the flight to Gatwick, I am rereading Before Night Falls, the autobiography of Reinaldo Arenas – it is full of accounts of humiliation at the hands of the Cuban Government. It describes the public ‘confession’ of the poet Heberto Padilla, who after thirty days in detention denounced friends, fellow writers and even his wife for ...”

“... It was full circle for Jose Lezama Lima: from vanity publishing to vanishing print. Then came Reinaldo Arenas, who looked a little bit like Lezama and a little bit like Padilla with a red head. He has read enough books to be able to spell trouble. Arenas (whose name means sands) was the only Cuban novelist who ...”