Book Description:
Cecilia Valdés by Cirilo Villaverde is a landmark of 19th-century Cuban literature — a sweeping social and political novel that explores race, class, and colonial power in Havana during the early 1800s. At the center of the story is Cecilia, a beautiful light-skinned mulatta raised in privilege but born into slavery, who falls tragically in love with Leonardo Gamboa, a wealthy white aristocrat unaware that Cecilia is his half-sister.
As their doomed romance unfolds, the novel reveals the brutal inequalities and racial tensions that shaped colonial Cuban society. With richly detailed settings and a wide cast of characters — from slaves and freed people to the colonial elite — Cecilia Valdés offers both a passionate personal drama and a biting critique of systemic injustice, hypocrisy, and exploitation.
Originally serialized and later expanded, the novel remains one of the most important works of 19th-century Latin American literature and an essential text in the study of race and colonialism in the Caribbean.
