PRAISE FOR WOMAN IN BATTLE DRESS

“Woman in Battle Dress by Antonio Benítez-Rojo, which has been beautifully translated from the Spanish by Jessica Ernst Powell, is the extraordinary account of an extraordinary person. Benítez-Rojo blows great gusts of fascinating fictional wind onto the all but forgotten embers of the actual Henriette Faber, and this blazing tale of her adventures as a military surgeon and a husband and about a hundred other fascinating things is both something we want and need to hear.”––Laird Hunt, author of Neverhome

“A fascinating novel, in a brilliant translation, about the unique fate of Henrietta Faber who played a gender-bending role in the history of Cuba.”––Suzanne Jill Levine, noted translator and author of Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fictions

“A picaresque novel starring an adventurous heroine, who caroms from country to country around the expanding Napoleonic empire, hooking up with a dazzling array of men (and women) as she goes. A wild ride!”––Carmen Boullosa, author of Texas: The Great Theft

“Very few novels dare to explore the historical representation of women to the extent that Woman in Battle Dress does, with impeccable veracity and bravado. The idea that a woman must pretend to be a man in order to become a physician, and is then punished by being forced back into a woman’s identity, only to escape to New Orleans as a fictional character, works as a Stendhal novel in reverse. Napoleonic France and the colonial Caribbean are chartered by men; New Orleans is extraterritorial, ready for a new saga. A true Doña Quijota, Henriette Faber takes on these roles to gain her freedom in a novel, the only modern space larger than life.”––Julio Ortega, Professor at Brown University, author of Transatlantic Translations

“As detailed as any work of history and as action filled as any swashbuckler, Woman in Battle Dress is not only Antonio Benítez Rojo’s last and most ambitious book, but also his masterpiece. In this graceful English translation of Henriette Faber’s autobiography––more than fiction, less than fact––American readers will have access to one of the most engaging novels to come out of Latin America in recent years.”––Gustavo Pérez-Firmat, Columbia University

“Reviving the Renaissance and Baroque figure of the virago, in Spanish Golden Age theater the mujer varonil, Antonio Benítez Rojo creates a fascinating woman protagonist who dresses and acts like a man, mostly as a qualified medical doctor, while participating in major historical events in Europe and the Caribbean. The reader’s attention is captivated by the suspense generated by the fear that her true sex will be discovered, and entertained by her wiles in trying to prevent it. Woman in Battle Dress is a rich and engaging historical novel.”––Roberto González Echevarría, Sterilng Professor of Hispanic and Comparitve Literature, Yale University, author of Modern Latin American Literature: A Very Short Introduction