Tentacle

‘Tentacle is as strange and beautiful a sea-change as its epigraph from The Tempest suggests … Achy Obejas brings the volume to English language readers with a social burja-cyborg flare - at once witchy, almost shamanisitically intuitive about the nature of language, and yet precise.’ Alexandra Marraccini, Times Literary Supplement

‘Where to begin? Rita Indiana’s Tentacle has the settings, themes, and expansiveness of a much larger book, but it blends that ambition with a host of irreverence (along with some nods to the music of Giorgio Moroder, which is never a bad thing). It’s a time-travel story, a meditation on gender and sexuality, and an art-world satire—as well as, arguably, a satire of ‘chosen one’ narrative tropes. To say that this is unlike anything else you’ll read this year is probably stating the obvious.’ Words Without Borders January Watchlist by Tobias Carroll

‘Alcide is a queer world unto himself. He travels through the history of the Dominican Republic, revealing its queer foundations while challenging the notion that time and space are static, unchanging categories.’ Alexandra Gonzenbach Perkins, Wasafiri

‘From beginning to end, Tentacle is a strange, unnerving, and at times beautiful book that critiques global inequality and the politicization of climate change.’ Amy Brady, Chicago Review of Books

Rita Indiana is a Dominican music composer, producer and key figure in contemporary Caribbean literature; Tentacle won the Grand Prize of the Association of Caribbean Writers in 2017, the first Spanish-language book to do so. She is the author of three collections of stories and four novels, and is a driving force in experimental Dominican popular music along with her band, Rita Indiana y los Misterios.

Achy Obejas is a writer, journalist and translator. She is the author of five books of fiction and has translated Junot Daz and Wendy Guerra, among many others. She is from Cuba and lives in California.