

And third, that he is the reincarnation of the Trojan princess Cassandra.

Second, that he will die, aged eighteen, as a soldier in the Cuban intervention in Angola.

Despite the signs that warn Rauli to repress and fear what he is, he knows three things to be true: First, that he was born in the wrong body. He loves to read, especially Greek myths, but in Cuba in the 1970s, novels and gods can be dangerous. His older brother is violent his philandering father doesn’t understand him his intelligence and sensitivity do not endear him to the other children at school. Ten-year-old Rauli lives in a world that is often hostile. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (January 2022)įrom the author of the award-winning The Black Cathedral, a darkly magical tale of a haunted young dreamer, born in the wrong body and time, who believes himself to be a doomed prophetess from ancient Greek mythology.
