Review of The Death of Fidel Pérez

Elizabeth Huergo’s background as a poet and short story writer imbues her first novel with a welcome lyricism, a well structured narrative, and a plot that is easy to follow. Through its excellent narrative technique—metaphors, similes, the personification of the city of Habana, and frequent use of flashbacks—the novel takes the reader to the present, the past, and the future of the city. Habana stands as a city anchored in a colonial past, fighting to justify its presence in Cuban history. Threaded through the novel are the lives of various Cubans, representing the many different social locations of those affected directly and indirectly by the dictatorial past as well as by the effects of the Cuban Revolution. Huergo creates dynamic and rounded characters that grow and change in the aftershock of a revolutionary history.