02824cam a2200313 i 4500 1261903395 TxAuBib 921217s1993||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 9780670840786 0670840785 (OCoLC)4545 DLC eng DLC UKM BAKER BTCTA YDXCP NIALS BTN EXW ZCU OCLCO OCLCF OCLCO OCLCQ TxAuBib rda eng spa Arenas, Reinaldo, 1943-1990. Antes que anochezca English. Before night falls / Reinaldo Arenas ; translated by Dolores M. Koch. New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Viking, 1993. xvii, 317 pages ; 23 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier ""Before Night Fall is Reinaldo Arenas's stunning autobiography - a bold and unrestrained account of his life as a writer and a homosexual. Arenas, acknowledged as one of the great twentieth-century Cuban writers, was born in 1943 into a poor, rural Cuban family. At the age of fifteen he joined Castro's guerrillas against Batista's right-wing regime, only to discover that repression under Castro would be on a monumental scale. Reinaldo Arenas spent twenty years of his life trying to survive his ""re-education,"" to safeguard his manuscripts, and to maintain his sanity when he was imprisoned in El Morro prison in Havana. But despite everything that happened to him, including betrayal by his aunt and some of his closest ""friends,"" Arenas triumphed, finally leaving Cuba during the Mariel exodus in 1980."" ""But America could never replace his beloved Cuba, and his anti-Castro stance made him unsympathetic to many American intellectuals. The final irony was his battle with AIDS, which dominated the last years of his life until he committed suicide on December 7, 1990, at the age of forty-seven."" ""Before Night Falls was begun before Arenas left Cuba and was completed in the last stage of the disease. It is an extraordinary document - a compelling and moving account of the hell that Arenas experienced in Cuba and the purgatory he endured in the United States. It is a book both raw and fierce, tender and lyrical, particularly about the Cuban landscape. In it you will discover a man of enormous vitality, resilience, and courage. Arenas writes of his own book, ""I tell my truth like a Jew who has suffered from racism, a Russian who has been in the Gulag, or any human being who has eyes to see things as they are: I cry out: therefore I am.""""--Jacket. Also issued online. Arenas, Reinaldo 1943-1990. Authors, Cuban 20th century Biography. Spanish fiction. Cuba. Biography.