It’s hard to say exactly when the novel is set. The contamination is spreading from the Caribbean Sea to the Atlantic. Readers learn that three successive ecological disasters have finished off “practically every living thing under the sea.” One of these catastrophes was a biological weapons spill caused by an earthquake off the island’s coastline. This is a Caribbean in which the sea has turned to chocolate-colored sludge, devoid of all life forms. Tentacle is set in the Caribbean, but not the Caribbean of tranquil waters and white sand beaches so sought-after by Western holiday-makers. Tentacle reaches back and forward through the ages, harnessing the fluidity of time, gender, and the natural world to reflect on colonial history and imagine a deeply disturbing future. The new title is apt: sufficiently sinister for a book that imagines an age of hyper-capitalism and environmental collapse, evoking the insidious spread of control and disease. A review by Ellen Jones for The Los Angeles Review of Books.ĪCHY OBEJAS has chosen Tentacle as the English title for Dominican writer and musician Rita Indiana’s latest novel, originally published in Spanish as La mucama de Omicunlé.
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