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ANTONIO BENÍTEZ-ROJO (1931–2005) Born in Panama and raised in Cuba, Antonio Benítez-Rojo was educated in the USA and Mexico, and established himself as a writer in 1960s Cuba with his prize-winning collection of short stories Tute de reyes (1967). In 1975 he the joined the Casa de las Américas, an organization created and based in Cuba which stimulates and forges links between cultural endeavours in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in 1979 was appointed Director of the Estudios de Caribe. In 1980 he defected from Cuba to the USA and worked as Thomas B. Walton, Jr., Memorial Professor of Spanish at Amherst College, Massachusetts. His works include a trilogy of books spanning three different genres: a novel, El mar de las lentejas (1979, trans. The Sea of Lentils); a collection of critical essays, La Isla que se Repite (1989, trans. The Repeating Island); and a book of short stories, A View from the Mangove (1998). La Isla que se Repite has become a highly influential book within postcolonial studies in both its Spanish and English versions. Drawing on Chaos theory, poststructuralist philosophy and Caribbean history, Benítez-Rojo offers a creolized vision of the Caribbean as simultaneously regional and global, and defined by the perpetual fractal and post-systemic cultural and historical shifts ranging across the archipelago of islands which link the Caribbean region to other times and places. His inspiring sense of the Caribbean as endlessly shape-shifting is reflected in the generic playfulness of his critical writings and his attempts to break down entrenched disciplinary divisions – between literary criticism and mathematics, or creative writing and cultural critique.