translated from the Spanish (Dominican Republic) by Jessica Ernst Powell
This is not a novel to take on if all the reader seeks is dismembered limbs, rotting flesh and devoured brains. Those aspects are present, but in the background as to the fore is Caribbean folklore, science, wit and wily twists.
The narrative takes the form of a scrapbook kept by Isadore Bellamy who worked with a brilliant but unnamed scientist at a pharmaceutical company that lies in the murky world between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, who believes himself to belong to the world of the undead.
Cabiya’s novel is experimental, and not just in that it can be read in two ways, chronologically, or as the contents page states, by each of its four categories.
Told in fragments; diary entries, interviews, first-hand accounts, botanical notes it is the story of a ‘zombie academic’ trying to conceal that he is not actually alive and using his position at the pharmaceutical research lab to secretly uncover a concoction that could bring him fully back to life.
The question on the reader’s lips is, is he really a zombie. To which we do get a satisfying answer. Though much of the fun, and really it is fun, in Cabiya’s writing is in addressing other concerns; to try to pass as someone you’re not, the difference between being ‘animated’ and being ‘alive’, and how a zombie may differ from an robot or a wooden doll.
A memorable tale of zombie woe, that really is a lot of fun.
My GoodReads score 4 / 5
Safe Return Doubtful 
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