Guillermo Rosales was a Cuban novelist. A double exile, writing in reaction both to Cuba's totalitarian regime and to the indifference of Cuban-American exiles bent on achieving the American Dream, Rosales created some of the best Cuban literature of the second half of the twentieth century, garnering comparisons to Carlos Montenegro and Reinaldo Arenas

Reinaldo Arenas

Reinaldo Arenas was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright who despite his early sympathy for the 1959 revolution, grew critical of and then rebelled against the Cuban government.- Life :...

.

Born in Havana

Havana

Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...

, Rosales was a lifelong misfit diagnosed with schizophrenia

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...

. A journalist and writer while still in Cuba, he had an early brush with fame when his novel "El Juego de la Viola," was a finalist in the reputable "Casa de las Americas" contest. But in 1979 he fled Castro's regime and went into exile in Miami, where he disappeared from public view. He ended up in halfway houses, 'those marginal refuges where the desperate and hopeless go'. The time he spent there provided the author with the material to write his most famous and viscerally haunting novella, ['["The Halfway House"']]. He was the winner of the prestigious 1987 "Letras de Oros" (Golden Letters) contest, judged by the Mexican poet and Nobel

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 laureateOctavio Paz

Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...

. Rosales committed suicide in Miami in 1993, at the age of 47. Before doing so, he destroyed most of his work. Two novels survived: '"El Juego de la Viola"' (1967) and '"The Halfway House"' (1987).

'"The Halfway House

The Halfway House

The Halfway House is a 1944 British drama film directed by Basil Dearden and starring Tom Walls, Mervyn Johns and Glynis Johns. It also features the French actress Françoise Rosay...

"' was translated into English by Anna Kushner and published by New Directions in 2009, featuring a preface by Jose Manuel Prieto. It has been hailed for its precise, lapidary style and its uncompromising treatment of personal responsibility for totalitarian rule. Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...

 (Starred Review) praised it as a "frightening, nihilistic cousin of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (novel)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a novel written by Ken Kesey. Set in an Oregon asylum, the narrative serves as a study of the institutional process and the human mind, as well as a critique of Behaviorism and a celebration of humanistic principles. Written in 1959, the novel was adapted into a...

".

El Juego de la Viola is forthcoming from New Directions.