Lessik, Alan. The Troubleseeker. New York: Chelsea Station Editions, c2016. 265 p. paperback. $18.00. ISBN 978-1-937627-27-0.

This is truly a fantastic first novel, in both senses of “fantastic”: really good, but also based on fantasy, unless you are a true believer in the Greek and Santeria gods.� Our hero is Antinio, a gay Cuban with a large extended family, perhaps middle class but after the revolution just barely hanging on.� The novel is told in the third person, but the main narrator is the Roman emperor, Hadrian (Hadriano), whose lover Antinous dies too early.� Antinio is named for him.� Hadrian was deified after his death and became a demi-god.� In addition, the Santeria Orishas play a major role.� Unlike the God of the Judeo Christian tradition, these gods participate actively in the daily lives of their people.� Luckily, at the front of the novel there is a list of all the Santeria Orishas and Antinio’s’ choruses: Reason, the Lamenters, the Shriekers, and the Siren, all of whom try to guide him.� Also listed are all the humans in the novel.

Antinio has an active gay life in Cuba, with lots of encounters and one primary lover Cloto.� Antinio becomes an accomplished linguist and is sent to East Germany for a time.� On the way back he hopes to leave the plane in Madrid and apply for asylum, but he is not permitted to leave the plane.� Eventually he leaves Cuba on the Mariel Boatlift.� He is shipped to Minnesota, where he is harassed for being gay until local gay activists rescue him.� He falls in love with his second lover, Laquesio, who dies of AIDS, which was just descending on gays and everyone else.� Antonio gets AIDS too, but survives long enough for the new meds which permit him to live his life.� He brings his twin boys and former wife to the U.S.� They settle in Miami.� Antinio moves to San Diego and gets a good job with a high tech translation firm.� He falls in love with Atropos in San Francisco.� They commute back and forth until Antinio’s job falls apart with newcomers who advocate machine translation rather than human knowledge of language.� He moved to San Francisco.� His health fails and eventually he commits suicide.

This is an exceedingly rich novel, reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, especially his One Hundred Years of Solitude.� It is highly recommended for libraries collecting modern gay literature, especially with a Latinx flavor.� It is expertly told, although one must pay attention because Hadrian the main narrator and the Santeria Orishas step in whenever they want to.� All readers open to exciting new gay novels will also want to read this book.

James Doig Anderson
Professor Emeritus of Library and Information Science, Rutgers University