Food and the Fantastic in Leonardo Padura's "Las cuatro estaciones"

[...]it is notable that the tetralogy intermittently depicts food, Cuba's most consistent and painful area of scarcity, in unbelievable diversity and abundance. [...]for Conde, this mother figure, this nourishing origin, is a culinary and psychological safe haven within an austere father-figure autocracy that disallows an acceptable level of sustenance and impedes self-actualization.