Freeway: La Movie

by Jorge Enrique Lage, Lourdes Molina (Translator)

An award-winning cyberpunk novel set in mid-21st century Cuba, La Movie crosses the absurdity of American pop culture with the deep, fragmented unease of Cuban-US relations. A novel-in-stories set in mid-twenty-first century dystopian Havana, Freeway narrates the adventure of two misfits wandering the construction site of a colossal freeway-to-be — a mysterious feat of engineering that slices through Havana, designed to connect the US and Cuba. The two embark on a futile journey, overlaid with the elusive filming of a documentary about the freeway construction. Both film quality and interior monologues drift aimlessly, haunted by Cuban history and US pop culture. La Movie is a satirical novel that attempts to reconcile what might be hopelessly the body and the machine; analog and digital; post-industrial overdevelopment and post-socialist underdevelopment; Cuba and the US; reality and fiction; the plasticity of personal identity and rigid categories such as gender, class, and nationality. Through the clash of utopian promises and dystopian realities, Freeway reveals the unease of contemporary culture from the US to Cuba.

Genres: Cyberpunk, Science Fiction

180 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Laura Freeland · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books that you can recognize as well-written and completely original, but you still aren’t sure what you just read. I am the last person to fully enjoy a satirical, sci-fi, dystopian novel, but somehow I was drawn to this book.

This is definitely a book I will appreciate more after my book club discussion next week!

[Marcos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do you like dark, plotless, meandering surrealism combined with various dated pop culture and historical references? I do.