Eastern Freezer

The title of this anthology of stories by Mireya Robles, Eastern Freezer, is that of the first story in the book, which sets the tone for the entire collection. It concerns life in a world where feelings have disappeared and emotional communication between human beings has been abolished. The themes of uprooting and alienation are familiar in Robles's work, and here they find a poetic expression in stories with a variety of settings, such as "The Parade", in which a lonely man in a city apartment hallucinates about a procession of robot-like creatures from the past, or "The Floating City", possibly set in a Cuba of oneiric quality, at the end of which the protagonist, like an automaton, follows incomprehensible orders. In most of these tales the heroes remember a former, richer life and suffer at the loss of feeling, the meaninglessness and the absurdity of the present. Occasionally, one of Robles's characters finds fulfillment, generally a child who discovers the world and once, a lover who, symbolically, finds her corresponding half. These stories of Mireya Robles are cry of pain against a dreary and indifferent world and a plea for human warmth.

Anna Diegel

Translator and Literary Critic