Cassada - Tapa blanda

"A small gem, a lean, sinewy book that evokes a full and complex world of bitterness, striving and recklessness...[It] leaves the reader stunned, brooding over the heart-wrenching futility of things" Richard Bernstein, New York Times; "The grace and brutality of his writing make him one of our best and most central novelists" Benjamin Kunkel, Los Angeles Times; "There is scarcely a writer alive who could not learn from his passion and precision of language" Peter Matthiessen

Obscured by low, brooding rain clouds, two lost planes drift ominously beyond their landing strip and over the heads of the waiting men below. A former enlisted man fresh out of flying school, Lieutenant Cassada is the latest arrival in a complacent Air Force squadron in Cold War Germany. From the outset, several characteristics alienate Cassada from the tightly-knit group of men he joins: his mysterious reticence, his Puerto Rican birth, and - most damning of all - his unabashed ambition. In the absence of warfare, Cassada struggles to prove his superiority as a pilot on routine flying procedures, one of which leads to the central tragedy of the novel. Brilliantly paced and haunting, the novel explores the tensions in a group of fighter pilots as much in conflict with themselves as with the enemy.