The Color of Summer

The Color of Summer, Arenas' finest comic achievement is the fourth novel in a quintet he called the Pentagonia. In this book we are transported to a carnival held in honor of the fiftieth year in power of a certain Caribbean dictator, named Fifo. The citizens have "come out" - both literally and figuratively - to celebrate, and the result is a hilarious inversion of the island's power structure and social order. A Rabelaisian tale of survival by wits and wit, The Color of Summer is ultimately a powerful and passionate story about the triumph of the human spirit over the forces of political and sexual repression.