Captain of the Sleepers

"In her new novel, Captain of the Sleepers, Mayra Montero probes those depths of inner ruin with a gelid calm and lucid exactitude that belies her character's tortured passions and the story's tropical settings—Puerto Rico, St. Croix and, most important, Vieques, the island to the side of P.R. in which the past, as Faulkner so wearily told us (and Montero appropriately quotes), isn't even past . . . A worthy peer of the likes of Mario Vargas Llosa."—San Francisco Chronicle

"The novel—the seventh by Cuban-born author Mayra Montero—is too engrossing to put down . . . She achieves a rare thing: crystallizing the bitter history of the relations among the United States, mainland Puerto Rico and Vieques without resorting to polemics."—The Nation


"Captain of the Sleepers is an evocative, haunting story, as fatalistic, moody and inevitable as a Greek tragedy."—January Magazine

"A captivating tale of love, politics, and death . . . a complex and suspenseful novel."—The Charlotte Observer

"One of the most exciting and interesting writers of the Americas, North and South."—Julia Alvarez

"[Montero] has never written better than in this increasingly suspenseful tale of divided loyalties and lingering resentment and sorrow. She's one of Latin America's finest writers, and this is her best novel yet."—Kirkus Reviews

"Montero charts the chilling undercurrents of steamy Caribbean life in novels notable for their lyrical intensity and mystery, eroticism and social acumen. . . . A haunting tale of a small place overrun by a superpower and a small family shattered by big dreams of liberation and love, and the mythic alignment of sex and death."—Booklist

"Montero, Cuban by birth but now residing in Puerto Rico, is the author of seven remarkably distinct novels (e.g., Deep Purple), five of which have been translated into English . . . In this one, where she writes in the voice of an adult male seeking to recapture his childhood, she entices us into her subversive Caribbean world."—Jack Shreve, Library Journal

"Montero artfully choreographs the confluence of family, romantic and revolutionary ardor."—Publishers Weekly