The Cigar Roller by Pablo Medina

Pablo Medina's new novel is a radiant journey through the mind of Amadeo Terra, a Cuban cigar-factory worker lying helpless in a Florida hospital after a massive stroke has left him paralyzed. His body no longer works and he has no means by which to communicate, but his mind is very much alive, as is his ruthless and audacious wit. His only human contact is with the callous nurse who constantly scolds him, the orderly who barely acknowledges him, and the nun who prays for Amadeo's salvation while he fantasizes about what's under her habit.

One day Nurse feeds him mango from a baby-food jar-a departure from the tasteless mush he frequently regurgitates with defiance-and the taste of it brings memories of his life in Havana flooding back to him. Once a master cigar roller and an imperious patriarch of enormous appetites, Amadeo now recalls his turbulent but passionate relationship with his wife Julia, his numerous romantic transgressions, his three sons toward whom he feels a shocking ambivalence, and the political strife that forced his family to relocate to Florida under desperate circumstances. Abandoned now, he is forced to confront the long-buried facts of his previously unexamined life. The Cigar Roller is a tour de force, an evocative portrait of a man whose life-once governed unapologetically by his basest urges-is now reduced mercilessly to its most basic functions.

Pablo Medina came to the United States from Cuba in 1960 at the age of twelve. He is the author of a memoir, Exiled Memories; the novels The Return of Felix Nogara and The Marks of Birth; and several volumes of poetry. He chairs the writing concentration at Eugene Lang College of New School University. Among his many honors are an award from the CINTAS Foundation and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund, and the Rockefeller Foundation.