Captain of the Sleepers

“Montero charts the chilly undercurrents of steamy Caribbean life in novels notable for their lyrical intensity and mystery, eroticism, and social acumen.” —Booklist

For fifty years, Andrés Yasín has carried a grudge against J. T. Bunker. Now, Bunker, eighty-two years old and dying of cancer, wants to tell his side of a story, a story of his affair with Andrés's mother. As a child Andrés knew Bunker as the “Captain of the Sleepers”—so called because he transported the bodies of those who had died off the island, but wished to be buried at home. But what really happened between Bunker and Andrés’s mother, and between her and her next lover, a leader in the Puerto Rican Nationalistic Insurrection, and what were the actual circumstances of Andrés’s mother’s mysterious death?

In this taut, erotic novel that slips effortlessly between past and present, remembrance and reality, Mayra Montero describes a feverish Caribbean childhood of secrets, disillusionment, and sexual awakening. Beautifully translated by Edith Grossman, The Captain of the Sleepers confirms Montero’s stature as one of our finest prose stylists and as an international writer of the first rank.

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

“A wonderful story.” —New York

“Too engrossing to put down.” —The Nation

“Excellent . . . A worthy peer of the likes of Mario Vargas Llosa.” —San Francisco Chronicle

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