Un Fantasma En Hialeah Gardens / A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens

Un moderno Bob Cratchit, Hugo Contreras, vive en un hmedo departamento de una sola habitacin y sabe que nunca dejar de pagar las cuentas mdicas de su difunta esposa ni sus propias deudas, acumuladas durante su juventud. Su Scrooge es Alexi Ramrez, un avaricioso abogado de cobranza cubano-americano con un rostro familiar por sus anuncios en las paradas de autobs y un serio problema personal: un fantasma en el casern de su familia.

Es bajo estas circunstancias que los dos hombres se conocen, ya que Hugo trabaja como babalao, ayudando a los habitantes de Miami a limpiar sus hogares de malos espritus. Desde hace mucho ya no cree en lo paranormal, pero cuando Alexi, a quien Hugo abomina porque ha estado quitndole su dinero durante aos, le promete perdonarle la deuda a cambio de sus servicios, no se puede negar. Dispuesto a salir de deudas y vengarse en nombre de su difunta esposa, Hugo har lo que ha hecho con decenas de clientes antes: usar trucos psicolgicos amateurs para convencer a Alexi de que los espritus ya se han ido y escapar libre de deudas antes de la prxima Navidad.

Por supuesto, la vida en el sistema capitalista corrupto nunca es tan simple, en especial cuando involucra sueos perturbadoramente vvidos de Navidades pasadas y presentes, infecciones de transmisin sexual, catlogos de decoracin para el hogar y un mal antiguo que ha estado vigilando a Hugo desde su infancia en las minas de plata de Bolivia. La historia personal de Hugo --incluyendo un peligroso cruce a Estados Unidos de nio y las desgarradoras circunstancias de la muerte de su esposa Meli que lo atormentan-- colisiona con los demonios de Alexi en un clmax (literalmente) explosivo que obliga a Hugo a decidir si quiere vivir como un hombre libre de deudas o condenarse a cubrir las deudas de sus seres queridos muertos.

Con un toque del humor satrico de El vendido, de Paul Beatty, la conciencia poltica de El tigre blanco, de Aravind Adiga, y el aire de mezcla de gneros de El Diablo en plata, de Vctor LaValle, Un fantasma en el Jardn Hialeah reimagina el clsico de Dickens para reflejar un nuevo siglo y la brillante exploracin de la invisibilidad y la extrema influencia que tienen las deudas en las vidas de la gente en el siglo XXI.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

A bracingly original, postcolonial riff on Charles Dickens's The Christmas Carol by award-winning debut author Raul Palma. Set in Raul's multiethnic and multicultural home city of Miami, the novel explores the problem of indebtedness--and specifically, the financial and psychic weight of moving through a world where the odds seem to always favor the rich and powerful.

A modern-day Bob Cratchit, living in a dank efficiency apartment, Hugo Contreras knows he will never stop paying for his late wife's medical debts or for his own debt accumulated in his youth. His Scrooge is Alexi Ramirez, an avaricious Cuban American debt-collection attorney with a face familiar from his bus stop ads and a serious problem of his own: a haunting at his family's McMansion.

It's under these circumstances that the two men meet face to face, for Hugo works as a babalwo, helping people in Miami cleanse their homes of evil. He's long since stopped believing in the supernatural himself, but when Alexi, whom Hugo despises for garnering his wages for years, promises to forgive Hugo's debts in exchange for his services, he can't refuse. Intent on both escaping his debt and exacting revenge for his late wife, Hugo will do what he's done with dozens of clients before: use slight-of-hand and amateur psychology to convince Alexi the spirits have departed and escape debt-free before the coming Christmas holiday.

Of course, life in a corrupt capitalist system is never that simple, especially when it involves disturbingly vivid dreams of Christmases past and present, sexually transmitted infections, home dcor catalogues, and an ancient devil who has been keeping tabs on Hugo since his childhood in the Bolivian silver mines. Hugo's personal history--including a fraught crossing to the United States as a boy and the wrenching, guilt-ridden circumstances of the death of his wife Meli--collide with Alexi's demons in a (literally) explosive climax that forces Hugo to decide whether he will live as a debt-free man, or consign himself to the debts of his lost loved ones.

With a touch of the satiric humor of Paul Beatty's The Sellout, the political consciousness of Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, and the genre-bending flair of Victor LaValle's The Devil in Silver, A HAUNTING IN HIALEAH GARDENS reimagines Dickens's classic to reflect a new century and a brilliant exploration of the invisibility and extreme influence that debt has over the lives of people in the 21st century.