First published in Argentina in 2019; published in translation by ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux on January 11, 2022

Had Raúl Iriarte been a half inch shorter, he would have avoided military service. Raúl’s father is short but muscular. He laments that Raúl, frail and physically weak, is just a little too tall to remain in Cuba. As soon as Raúl turns 18, Cuba sends him to Angola to support liberation forces in the Angolan Civil War.

Raúl goes willingly because he wants his mother to view him as a man. Yet his mother has long dressed Raúl as a woman so she can pretend that Raúl is her long-dead sister. Raúl has always preferred to dress like a woman. He is small, blonde and blue-eyed, not a typical Cuban. He doesn’t dress as a woman in his military unit, where he feels like a pretend soldier, but other soldiers still call him Marilyn Monroe or Olivia Newton-John. His captain regularly rapes him, supposedly because Raúl reminds the captain of his wife in Cuba. The captain depends on Raúl’s silence, as opposed to his own conduct, to preserve his good name.

Most people in Raúl’s life, including his brother and father, assume that he is gay, but Raúl feels no particular attraction to either gender. Raúl believes he has a gift of prophecy, like Cassandra from Greek mythology. He introduces himself as Cassandra when, before entering the military, he dresses as a woman and goes clubbing. Raúl likes being in the company of women — he gets along with his father’s Russian lover and feels some sympathy for his mother’s devotion to her lost sister — but only while partying with a transvestite friend who accompanies him to clubs does Raúl feel open to express himself.

In Angola, Raúl carries on an internal dialog with the mythical Cassandra. He seems to believe that he once existed as Cassandra, although he understands that others will assume he was influenced by reading The Iliad when he was still “a hypersensitive boy.” He believes he can sense the dead and the ancient gods. He believes he can foresee death, including his own, and his family’s reaction to it.

For such a powerful story, Call Me Cassandra is written in a remarkably gentle voice, Raúl’s first-person voice. Raúl spends his young life thinking about mythology, ultimately constructing one of his own. Given that Raúl’s death is foretold, the story is bleak. It is a story of a young man who cannot live as he chooses, whose gender choices are made in defiance of Cuban society, whose desire to study literature in a university is denied by a Cuban government that sends him to war, and whose freedom to live even a pleasureless life is taken away by a brutal military captain. Raúl accepts his fate but, as the last pages make clear, does not welcome it. Call Me Cassandra illustrates how repressive societies (and even subcultures of toxic masculinity within liberal democracies) destroy the concept of freedom that they claim to hold so dear.

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I don't understand how something so surreal and dislocated can also feel so terribly sad. The novel is a beautiful lament, an elegy to what might have been. The narrator/author evokes the Cassandra myth in a way that is so poetic and so strong that it makes me see how Cassandra's story is the story of people's lives, that we live in a world where the most innocent and the most vulnerable among us are fatefully set on a course toward an inevitable unhappy ending. Every small happening in this novel was steeped in sadness. Somehow the unexpected wild swings back and forth through time in the novel made the story more meaningful and rich. It all fit together, a little magically. The writing is gorgeous. I was moved.

Gala’s latest book translated into English is an eloquent testament to the power of story-telling as this tale hauntingly explores identity against cultural expectations.

Raul, a slightly built effeminate 10-year-old who enjoys reading the classics, living in Cienfuegos, Cuba is tired of being bullied, declares he wants to be Cassandra. The reader quickly learns that Raul/Cassandra knows he will die at age 19 while “fighting” in Angola. After, all Cassandra, the Greek prophetess, could state the future, but no one will believe her.

In a non-linear manner this smooth following narrative moves between Cienfuegos, the Trojan War, and the Angolan battlefields. Growing up Raul does not know peace as his violent older brother wants him to continue in his footsteps, and his philandering father wants him to be more like his older brother, and to console his grieving mother dressing like a girl pretends to be her dead sister. Just barely making being accepted by the Cuban army, Raul/Cassandra becomes part of the 1975 Cuban contingent being sent to fight in the liberation of Angola.

I enjoyed the mash-up of Greek and African mythology and deities in this coming-of-age tale.
Translator Anna Kushner does a flawless job with this disquieting tale that in turns is a gut-puncher and a lyrical sanctuary.

Overall, this is an inventive page-turner that uniquely and cleverly looks at gender identity cruelty when expectations are not met.

Raul is nothing like the other kids. The ten-year-old boy can see dead people and he knows when those he meets will die. Of course, he cannot be understood by his peers or family and with his love for dresses and his very small body, he frequently becomes the victim of bullying and is called all sorts of names. He himself knows who he is, Cassandra, the ancient goddess who could predict the future but wasn’t believed. So is he. He grows up in his hostile Cuban surroundings and has to train for the military service which will lead him to Angola, a sister state of the Leninist-Communist era of the 1970s. His gift is a burden he cannot share with people, only with the gods he sees and whom accompany him.

Fiction that transgresses the border between fictional reality and fantasy are not necessarily my favourite genre, yet, Cuban born author Marcial Gala cleverly integrates both and thus creates a wonderful protagonist for his novel “Call me Cassandra”. Raul is gifted and cursed at the same time, not necessarily the best combination in a hostile world where he has to prepare for fighting in a war. Fantasy is a way to escape and maybe the only one to endure the world around him.

There are two fascinating aspects about the novel, first of all, Raul’s way of escaping his father’s virile expectations which he knows already as a small boy, he will never be able to fulfil. Thus, he can only find likeminded persons in the women around him, most of all his father’s Russian lover. Literature opens different ways of thinking where Raul can find alternatives to his life that he can only live behind closed doors as boys dressed in women’s clothes are nothing for the Cuban world of the 1970s.

The second, much more horrifying is what the transgender boy has to go through, first at school and later in the army. He is not only bullied but repeatedly the victim of violence and abuse. Yet, nobody seems to care, it seems as if it is ok since Raul does not fulfil the expectations and this does not belong.

Gala elegantly conveys Raul’s different realities and allows a fascinating insight in the boys unique thinking.

this was a bit of a let down . whilst there were small fleeting moments of clarity within this novel (there are some well done sentences and an interesting commentary on post-revolutionary Cuba as far as race and sexuality), the novel fell a bit flat for me. perhaps if you're more a greek mythology fiend it may be more to your liking but the novel felt like an excess of telling instead of showing and overall felt less momentous than the events that it described should have rendered it. the depiction of Cuba in many ways fell into Western paradigms of Cuba (not necessarily unselfconciously but something to keep in mind if you're of that leaning). Overall, just okay (great cover though!)

This is an unusual novel that moves back and forth in time and place- modern Cuba, Angola, and the Trojan War. Rauli, a gender fluid boy, doesn't know where he belongs but he knows that he is Cassandra. He also knows that he will die in Angola. How to reconcile this? Gaia has a knack for language and if you, like me, get a little lost, that might be his intent. It helps to have at least a vague understanding of the Iliad to appreciate what he's done. While I didn't particularly enjoy this, I did admire it. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

Marciel Gala's Call Me Cassandra is so utterly new and unexpected that it forces the reader to ask "how on Earth did Gala come up with this?"

Cassandra is actually Raúl, born physiologically male in post-revolutionary Cuba. Their "femininity" means they're bullied at school by classmates and at home by their father and brother. Their mother likes to pretend they're her sister Nancy, killed by cancer. Their favorite pastime is reading, and many of the classics they read are considered counterrevolutionary, which complicates their life even further.

At some point, they realize they are not Raúl, but Cassandra: the Cassandra of the Iliad and the Trojan War, the prophetess condemned to be disbelieved by everyone and to witness the destruction of her nation. Cassandra dresses as female, goes out dancing—and sees the future.

As Raúl, Cassandra joins the military (just barely meeting the physical requirements) and becomes one of the Cuban soldiers fighting in Angola. Raúl is called "Marilyn Monroe" by their fellow enlisted and "Olivia Newton-John" by their Captain, who dresses Raúl as his wife and forces Raúl to engage in sex acts. Cassandra sees the dead inhabiting the land where her unit is stationed and knows that she will soon be joining them when the Captain shoots her to prevent the spread of rumors that could sully his military record.

See what I mean? How on Earth did Gala come up with this? But it works!

The experience of reading the book is less confusing than my summary above might indicate. Cassandra is certain of her identity and explains herself to readers gradually, so that her complexity becomes clearer across the course of the novel.

Readers may want to do some quick online reading about the Cassandra of the Trojan War and the Cuban role in Angola, but no burdensome research is required; a Wikipedia article or two will do the trick. Having this information fresh in one's mind makes the parallels with the original Cassandra story clearer.

Call Me Cassandra offers a dark read. It's not for those who like their stories lighthearted with happy endings. But if you like reading tragedy—and I very much do—Call Me Cassandra offers a complex experience with a great many opportunities for reflecting on belief/disbelief, how political ideologies are manifested in daily life, and on a tale that has been capturing human imaginations for millennia.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

Call Me Cassandra by author Marcial Gala immediately draws us in with the voice of Rauli, a sad young boy whose story is written in one of the most unique ways I’ve read in a long time. The plot jumps back and forth between Cuba and Angola in different periods of time, with some moments of fantasy thrown in which moves the story along in a fluid poetic sequence. Rauli knows what his fate in life will be from early on as he’s always had the ability to know things. As a thin, blond, blue-eyed sensitive effeminate boy growing up in a macho Cuban culture eventually sent to war in Angola, his story is told frankly and with a sad resignation. This is a contemporary novel touching on themes of sexuality from a Cuban point of view. I really enjoyed the style and prose.

Magical and brutal story of Rauli, a delicate boy in Cuba who believes he is the doomed prophetess Cassandra.
Shifting between time, Ilyad and Angola, the protagonist shares his search for identity in a harsh world.
I found the book heart breaking and gritty, well worth reading.

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. Ten year old Rauli lives in Cuba with his violent brother and father and his dreamy mother, but he also knows that he is the reincarnation of Cassandra of Greek myth. This is a rough, short book where we see Rauli misunderstood and bullied in his childhood and later in Angola as he fights with his fellow Cubans in a war so far from home. The story bounces back and forth through time, even to the ancient shores of Troy, as Rauli can see the fates and deaths of each person he meets, as well as his own.

I adored Marcial Gala's earlier novel The Black Cathedral and recommend his latest offering, Call Me Cassandra. Gala combines the literary and the political beautifully. And, the Cassandra myth is one that I think many relate with and is a wonderful lens with which to explore the political.