"Sarduy is the master of wordscapes that dip, shake, and explode."--"The New York Times Book Review"For the first time in English, Severo Sarduy's most autobiographical work, centered on two transvestites who undergo oppositional sexual surgeries (one is castrated, the other is given a new member). This convention-defying, scatological, and very funny novel is a paradise of words, "paradisic by plenitude" (Roland Barthes).Severo Sarduy (1937-1993) was a Cuban poet, author, playwright, and literary critic, as well as a leading intellectual in the Cuban Revolution. His novel "Cobra" was awarded the Prix Medicis.