Daniel Chavarria's Adios Muchachos is a fun little book exploring the world of prostitutes, unseemly businessmen and death in post-revolutionary Cuba. Uruguayan Daniel Chavarria seems mostly known for more literary work, but according to the bio on the inside flap he is said to have two passions: "classical literature and whores". Well, it shows.

Chavarria's main protagonist is Alicia, a high class prostitute who gets wealthy foreigners to buy her beautiful, expensive things so that she and her mother (a pre-revolutionary Cuban socialite) don't have to deal with the infirmities of life in Castro's Cuba. Alicia has an elaborate scam involving a bicycle accident that she works, along with her body, into an act of perfection. The precision timing is hilarious, as is the strategy her mother and her have worked out to squeeze the maximum sympathy out of their clueless (yet sexually aroused) victims. The crux of the story happens when Alicia's latest conquest, Victor, is not who he seems. Death and mayhem ensue.

The subject matter could easily be salacious, but Chavarria has a neat trick of using beautiful prose to describe people doing less-than-beautiful thing. He has a writing style that is simultaneously sophisticated, but not elitist. He's just telling a good story, and doing it in the best way possible.

(Originally at OliverWillis.com)