Novel
Cecilia Valdés or El Angel Hill
Cecilia Valdés o La Loma del Ángel
Cirilo Villaverde · 1882
Synopsis
Havana, around 1830. Cecilia Valdés, a beautiful light-skinned mulatta, is the illegitimate daughter of the slave trader Cándido de Gamboa; Leonardo, the same man's legitimate son, a wealthy student, becomes her lover without knowing she is his half-sister. Around them, the novel shows the whole society of the island, the aristocrats, the poor, the free Blacks and the slaves, and what skin colour decides for each of them.
Context
A short first version appeared in Havana in 1839; the definitive, much expanded version came out in 1882 from the New York printer of El Espejo, with the subtitle “novela de costumbres cubanas”. The chapters open with quotations, in the manner of Walter Scott. Gonzalo Roig made a zarzuela from it, premiered in Havana in 1932, and Cuban cinema a film in 1982; Reinaldo Arenas and Daína Chaviano gave their own versions. Jean Lamore translated it into French in 1984, Helen Lane into English in 2005.
Who it is for
A long nineteenth-century narrative, which demands patience for its pictures of Havana society.
Prizes and reception
Never out of print in Spanish, it is regarded as the best Cuban novel of its century.
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