Pedro Cabiya's Reinbou, in Jessica Powell's spot-on English translation, is a gem! Lets put it this way, I feel as if Ive found a treasure at the end of a readers rainbow. The weaving together of narratives, the little mysteries and discoveries, the absorbing characters, even more profoundly, the deep dive into our Dominican/ Caribbean cultures, the deftnever heavy dutycritique of our racist relationship with our neighbor country (with the Haitian appearance at the end, bearing a seashell), the bittersweet vision of our present and future histories. May we listen to the oceanic music of Cabiyas voice inside that seashell! Cabiya is our own native-grown Caliban-Ariel-Prospero rolled into one hell of a writer. Julia Alvarez, author of The Cemetery of Untold Stories and the international bestseller In the Time of the Butterflies
"The story of the 1965 April Revolution, in the Dominican Republic, has been told many times, but this is the first time we see it through the eyes of a child, focused on what is perhaps its most intense, devastating facet: growing up without a father. Pedro Cabiya's novel demonstrates, like never before, that innocence is the best way to unmask barbarity." Mayra Montero, author of Dancing to "Almendra"
Dense and exciting . . . Cabiya evokes the Dominican Republics heat and passion with frank and poetic prose and the excitement of a spy thriller. This is teeming with life. Publishers Weekly
Blow-by-blow action sequences, suitcases containing gold bars, and a framing story in which the narrator reminds his distracted audience to pay attention all give the novel a rollicking, cinematic quality. (It was released as a film in 2017.) But the underlying truths about Dominican history that award-winning Cabiya excavates are serious indeed. Brendan Driscoll, Booklist
Cabiyaa Puerto Rican writer who lives in the Dominican Republicturns a military thriller about the 1965 Dominican civil war into a contemporary fairy tale about a young boy whose innocent goodness has the power to change lives. [ ...] A sometimes angry, sometimes sardonic, but ultimately optimistic view of humanity. Kirkus Reviews
A blistering exploration of US foreign policy in the second half of the twentieth century. The use of parallel timeframes throughout much of the novel also helps illustrate the close relationship between past and present for Reinbous characters, and the way that the two can bleed togethersometimes literally. Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders
[ Reinbou is a] sweeping historical novel of the Dominican Republics civil war . . . featuring a cast of unforgettable characters, rendered in energetic prose . . . Essential for an intimate understanding of the history of the DR and the US intervention. JR Ramakrishnan, Electric Literature
Provocative, irreverent and magisterial. A tale at once epic and satirical in which the defeated, in a Caribbean suffering relentless intervention, are the only heroes. Luis Negrón, author of Mundo Cruel
Cabiya is pure genius . . . funny, provocative, unsettling, all at once. Rita Indiana, author of Tentacle
One of the most respected and prolific writers living in the Caribbean today. Karen Van Drie, executive director of Global Literature in Libraries Initiative
Pedro Cabiya is an incredible intellectual and literary force in the Caribbean letters. Mayra Santos-Febres, author of Our Lady of the Night
In the style of Elmore Leonard or Quentin Tarantino, Cabiya has reclaimed the April War for literature and colored it with his obsessions. Employing a diverse cast of spies, constitutionalists, lunatics, heroes, martyrs, traitors, torturers, sadists, femme fatales, revolutionaries, historians, twins, and pedophiles, he reveals the communicating vessels linking three generations marked by war and the abuse of power. Frank Bįez, author of The End of the World Came to My Neighborhood
Instead of focusing on the heroes, founding fathers, political parties and epic exploits of the great machista pageant that is [ the Dominican Republics] national history, Cabiya attends to the women, the children and the popular classes who, with their labor and their love have made it possible for life and the illusion of living to endure, despite state terror and an economy that looms over them every minute of every day. Daily life takes center stage in this story, which Cabiya depicts in minute detail and with great sensitivity, humor and irony born of tremendous affection for the people who make a country... Perhaps what best summarizes Cabiya's perspective is this simple observation noted in the novel: 'Everything is tiny in a shack, except it's inhabitants.'" Juan Duchesne Winter, author of Gotcha
