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Seven Stories Press

Works of Radical Imagination

"In just 96 pages, Luis Negrón is satirical, heartwarming, heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud funny. His collection of short fictional stories, Mundo Cruel, is gay fiction at its best." —The Daily Texan

Mundo Cruel: Stories by Luis Negrón
Translated by Suzanne Jill Levine

In 2014, Mundo Cruel was the first translated work to ever win the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction.

Masterfully satirical with a discrete solemnity at its core, Mundo Cruel elegantly presents to its readers a world both tragic and outrageous. The collection's nine short stories open a door into working class Santurce, Puerto Rico, where shoddy medical offices, Catholic churches, Mormon temples, and Santeria storefronts line the sunbaked streets. Here, a bumbling sex-worker-turned-fugitive avoids capture with astonishing and bewildering gymnastics. Back-biting mothers hand down judgment on their neighbors and the world at large from their front lawns. A desperate dog-owner will do anything to have his precious, deceased pet preserved by a taxidermist. A young Chosen One with a curious gift helps his fellow parishioners find God. Mundo Cruel is campy, it is satisfying, and it is unexpected, but, most importantly, it is utterly delightful.

"A study in verve, sass, and voice, peppered with a dash of spirituality. Short and sweet...Mundo Cruel is a shrewd celebration of subversion, to be sure, but for all its bravado the broader point here is a quiet reaffirmation that we all possess the innate capacity to subvert the status quo. Queerness is merely one mechanism (perhaps the most fun) by which it can be accomplished." —Lambda Literary

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