Calvert Casey - PB

Part Irish-American, part Cuban, gay but married for a time, a stutterer, Cuban patriot and exile for much of his adult life (which ended in suicide at the age of 45 in 1969), Casey dwelt in his stories about passive, paralyzed characters and their connections, or rather disconnections, to the rest of the world. They include an uncomprehending boy who goes with his uncle to a brothel and leaves as innocent as he came; a lonely bookworm who invents the perfect young woman only to lose her to another man, also an invention of his mind; a New Yorker with a stutter who returns to his idealized Cuba only to find himself a victim of a brutal attack by government agents; a young boy whose family's only visitors are supernatural beings that his mother channels. The characters, wrapped in longing and fear, accept their natures and situations calmly, as is best seen in ""The Execution,"" in which a man is sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit yet never refutes the charges. Casey chose to write in Spanish and firmly entrenched himself as a Cuban artist. This volume is a fine, overdue introduction to one of Communist Cuba's most sophisticated writers. (May)