News Center

Feb. 25, 2015 – Cubanabooks has published a translation by Barbara Riess of an anthology of María Elena Llana’s short stories, “Domicilio Habanero,” or “An Address in Havana.”

Riess, who is chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at Allegheny College, will give a presentation on Cuba at noon on Thursday, March 5 in Quigley Hall auditorium at Allegheny College. The public is invited.

A bilingual collection, “An Address in Havana” highlights Llana’s most critically successful stories, a mixture of fantasy and dark humor.

Llana’s short stories contain a rich and entertaining representation of a particular social class in Cuba during the last 40 years: the bourgeoisie who struggled to maintain their social status and participated only by default in the construction of the new socialist society. Portraits of family and twisted gender roles appear throughout the stories, within a mysterious domestic sphere that is unmistakably set in Havana.

“Solitary characters, afflicted by real or fictitious fears,” says author Mirta Yáñez in describing the collection. “A world plagued with absurdities. Exceptional stories, told through a subjectively ironic perspective with both humor and an even-handed cruelty.”

Riess co-translated the underground classic Chicano novel “Puppet” and “Sanctuaries of the Heart” by Margarita Cota-Cárdenas. She also published translations of María Elena Llana’s work in the collection “Cuba on the Edge.”

Her research on Cuban women’s fiction has been published in Confluencia, Latin American Literary Review and Cuban Studies/Estudios Cubanos. She joined the Allegheny College faculty in 1999.