Al Schaller

Memories of Development takes an intimate look at the long-term effects of exile and disillusionment within the Cuban diaspora. Edmundo, a former revolutionary who immigrated long ago to the United States, now finds himself in his sixties facing an uncertain future and the encroachment of old age and death. As he takes stock of his life, we see a man who has let his failed ideals and corrosive desires shatter his faith in humanity, leaving him exquisitely isolated. Estranged from the idealism of his remembered past and the material realities of his North American present, Edmundo is a man straddling two worlds with little hope of finding peace in either.

“Four decades after Memories of Underdevelopment, Desnoes flexes his muscles again to close the circle and demonstrate, by the way, that his masterwork was no fluke. This second part, though independent of the first, is a similar torrent of strong prose that casts its propulsive ideas directly at the consciousness. A meticulous game of excavation that offers the reader many hours of pleasure and not a few disturbing questions. It is never too late to unearth an undiscovered master.” —Alejandro Luque, Spanish writer and journalist