A National Book Award Finalist for Fiction The debut novel by New York Times bestselling author Rachel Kushner, called “shimmering” ( The New Yorker ), “multilayered and absorbing” ( The New York Times Book Review ), and “gorgeously written” ( Kirkus Reviews ). Young Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites come of age in pre-revolutionary Cuba, where the American expatriates tend their own fiefdom—three hundred thousand acres of United Fruit Company sugarcane that surround their gated enclave under the shadow of the Batista dictatorship. If the rural tropics are a child's dreamworld, Everly and K.C. nevertheless have keen eyes for the indulgences and betrayals of the grown-ups around them—the mordant drinking and illicit loves, the race hierarchies and violence. In Havana, a thousand kilometers and a world away from the American colony, a cabaret dancer meets a French agitator named Christian de La Mazière, whose seductive demeanor can’t mask his shameful past. Together they become enmeshed in the brewing revolutionary underground and the political upheaval that will soon transform the island. When Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro lead a revolt from the mountains above the cane plantation, torching the sugar and kidnapping a boat full of "yanqui" revelers, K.C. and Everly begin to discover the brutality that keeps the colony and its corporate imperialism humming. Though their parents remain blissfully untouched by the forces of history, the children hear the whispers of what is to come. Kushner’s first novel is a tour de force, haunting and compelling, with the urgency of a telex from a forgotten time and place. "Multilayered and absorbing... Studded with illuminating images....Kushner has fashioned a story that will linger like a whiff of decadent Colony perfume." — Susann Cokal, The New York Times Book Review (cover review) "With its sharp detail and precisely drawn characters, Telex from Cuba offers a compelling look at a paradise corrupted." — People "A riveting drama. Given the recent Cuba headlines, Kushner's tale, passionately told and intensively researched, couldn't have come at a more opportune time." — Publishers Weekly "Castro's coup serves as a riveting backdrop...gorgeously written." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Kushner has written a gripping tale of what it was like to live through a momentous time. It is a powerful, haunting look at the human side of revolution." — Booklist “A pure treat from the cover to the very last page. It's the kind of thing you should stock up on to give sick friends as presents; they'll forget their arthritis and pneumonia, I promise, once they walk into a land that's gone now, but not yet quite forgotten: Cuba in the last few years before Fidel Castro took over…. ‘Lost’ and ‘Gone,’ as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in the early pages of "The Last Tycoon," lost and gone. A world we'll never see again, any part of it. Rachel Kushner uses her considerable powers to bring it back for us, one last time.” —Carolyn See, Washington Post Book World “[A] lush, meticulous, cinematic debut novel…. Kushner’s vivid renderings of country clubs and cane shacks are due in no small part to her access to primary sources.” —Megan Deem, Elle “Kushner brings both a reporter's meticulous research and a novelist's flair for the fantastical to her examination of Cuba before the revolution….she illuminates both the natural beauty and savage inequities of an island constantly on the cusp of lawlessness….a snapshot from a long-gone era.” — Entertainment Weekly “Kushner fills the novel with enough vivid details to make readers feel as if they are on the island at the zenith of American prosperity…. Kushner’s evocation of the Americans’ decline is fresh and compelling. She takes us to a place and time we’ve seldom visited before.” —David Abrams, San Francisco Chronicle “The bygone American world in 1950s Cuba is brought vibrantly alive … ambitious…. Kushner is an evocative writer with a cinematic eye for telling detail.” —John Marshall, Seattle Post-Intelligencer “For all its political currents, Telex never reads like a lesson. This is largely because the novel’s ideas are expertly blended into its story line, which gains momentum with thrillerlike passages, stunning descriptions and a compelling cast….[ Telex from Cuba ] elegantly weaves together a gripping story of individual and their lives leading up to one of the most notorious revolutions of the twentieth century.” —Jamie L. Parra, Time Out New York “In the passages set among the American expatriates, Kushner displays a keen sense of the detail that reveals human nature. With its depictions of colonial privilege, excess and hubris, Telex from Cuba seems in the tradition of colonial novelists that includes Graham Greene, W. Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh and William Boyd.” —Chauncey Mabe, South Florida Sun-Sentinel “[A] stunner of a novel…. A fluid, eye-opening symphony of a book….Kushner's period d