From Woman in Battle Dress

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsAntonio Benítez RojoAntonio Benítez Rojo (Havana, 1931-Amherst, MA, 2005) is widely considered among the most significant Cuban authors of his generation. An essayist, novelist, short story and screenplay writer, his work has been translated into nine languages and included in more than fifty anthologies. Benítez Rojo's final novel,Mujer en traje de batalla (Woman in Battle Dress, forthcoming),was first published in 2001 by Alfaguara. The novelre-imagines the story of Henriette Faber, a nineteenth-century historical woman who, dressed as a man, studied medicine inParis, served as a military surgeon under Napoleon, and eventually travelled to Cuba where, still living as a man, she continued to practice medicine, married another woman, and ultimately became the subject of one of the most sensational legal trials in nineteenth-century Cuba. The following excerpt finds Faber arriving for the first time in Cuba, where, disillusioned with the Bourbon Restoration in France, she's gone to visit a pair of old friends, and where she'll embark on a new chapter in her eventful lifeJessica Ernst PowellJessica Ernst Powell received a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship for her work on Antonio Benítez Rojo's novel, Woman in Battle Dress