The Angel of Sodom

In 1926 Alfonso Hernández Catá published The Angel of Sodom. It is considered the first great gay novel in Cuban literature. Its protagonist discovers his erotic inclinations in the midst of his closed family environment and is torn between the consequences of his personal condition and the inevitable.
The central discourse of The Angel of Sodom reflects the internal and social conflicts of José María, the main character of the novel. During a process of self-recognition of his homosexual condition, this is not the only theme present in the work of Hernández Catá.
The plot of this novel cannot be understood separately from the socio-cultural realities of Cuba at the time.

“No, he hadn’t noticed the woman… I didn’t even know if she was blonde or brunette. His five senses, added to that of sight, had not sufficed for him to look, with all his longing, with all the sensual powers asleep until then, without his reason noticing, elsewhere. Since the two chrysalis left the wrapping on the ground, an imperative instinct, taking over his gaze, completely erased the female statue, the beasts, even the crowd. It was a long, deep minute, murky, full of stirred feces of instinct, in which their reason, their morals, their modesty, their timidity, their very dignity, felt a sudden and irresistible eruption erupt beneath them. And now, in the middle of the street, stumbling which, fortunately, Jaime attributed to his lack of habit of drinking, he confessed without yet measuring the terrible scope of the discovery, that only the echo of the touch of one of the three narrowed right hands persisted in his, and that only one figure remained in his retina and in his nerves: that of man… That of the young and stocky man nothing more!”

Edited by Adriana López-Labourdette.