“What 1984 did for surveillance, and Fahrenheit 451 did for censorship, A Planet for Rent does for tourism. It’s a wildly imaginative book and one that, while set in the future, has plenty of relevance to the present.”
“A Planet for Rent criticizes Cuban reality in thinly veiled terms. Cuban defectors leave the country not on rafts but on 'unlawful space launches'; prostitutes are 'social workers'; foreigners are 'xenoids'; and Cuba is a ‘planet whose inhabitants have stopped believing in the future.’ The book is particularly critical of the government-run tourism industry of the ’90s, which welcomed and protected tourists—often at the expense of Cubans—and whose legacy can still be felt today.” - The NY Times
“The most successful and controversial Cuban science fiction writer of all time, Yoss is known for his acerbic portraits of the island under Communism. In his bestselling A Planet for Rent, Yoss pays homage to Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and 334 by Thomas M. Disch. A critique of Cuba in the 90s, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, A Planet for Rent marks the debut in English of an astonishingly brave and imaginative Latin American voice.”
”Some of the best sci-fi written anywhere since the 1970s.… A Planet for Rent, like its author, a bandana-wearing, muscly roquero, is completely unique: riotously funny, scathing, perceptive, and yet also heart-wrenchingly compassionate.… Instantly appealing.” - The Nation
(Group read suggestion from Mia DeGiovine Chaveco, book club co-founder.)