Al Otro Lado

"Al otro lado" [On the Other Side] On an island in the Caribbean (could it be Cuba?) live our daily evils. Fear, luxury, sins, confessions are on one side; lovers, prostitutes, homosexuals, victims, and the victimized are on the other. Inside the confessional, only a priest, a woman, and God know what goes on. Then loneliness, death, another country... This is a book in which eroticism reaches its highest level of expression, a book of inconfessable confessions that questions sin and draws a shaky line between good and evil, as a priest who is much too young listens to a woman who is much too scared. It is a book of orgies and seductions, where a woman explores, through the body, the labyrinths of the soul, and where prostitutes, crooks, murderers, transvestites, innocents, homosexuals, and lovers join in a sometimes frenzied, sometimes tender dance. "Al otro lado" is a book unanimously celebrated by critics. Through impeccable prose, the protagonist lives a strange and intense relationship with her confessor. It all takes place in a ghostly church that bleeds or sheds tears, in which Christians and non-believers occupy the same space. "Al otro lado" is a temple of sensations: games of words, games of the flesh, games of life and death. This is, without doubt, one of the most revealing books of contemporary Hispanic literature.