ABSTRACT
In regarding Sarduy's novels, from Gestos to Pjaros de la playa, the most salient feature may be the disruptive nature of his prose. In a sense, as exiles, both writers lived outside the law the law of their native lands since their first transgression, like many Spanish-American writers and preceding all else, was to have left. Sarduy had been active as a young writer contributing poetry, fiction, and critical pieces to Havana journals in the late 1950s, before and especially after the Cuban Revolution. A Cuban novel must make explicit all the strata in that superposition must show all its archeological planes. This was in effect a statement of purpose for his own second novel, From Cuba with a Song, which he was then writing; but along with other abiding concerns such a view was already present somewhat in his first novel. Set just before the Cuban Revolution, Gestos wavers at the edge of abstraction to focus on collective gestures.
