PRAISE FOR WOMAN IN BATTLE DRESS
“Woman in Battle Dress by Antonio Benítez-Rojo, which has been beautifully translated from the Spanish by Jessica Ernst Powell, is the extraordinary account of an extraordinary person. Benítez-Rojo blows great gusts of fascinating fictional wind onto the all but forgotten embers of the actual Henriette Faber, and this blazing tale of her adventures as a military surgeon and a husband and about a hundred other fascinating things is both something we want and need to hear.”––Laird Hunt, author of Neverhome
“A fascinating novel, in a brilliant translation, about the unique fate of Henrietta Faber who played a gender-bending role in the history of Cuba.”––Suzanne Jill Levine, noted translator and author of Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fictions
“A picaresque novel starring an adventurous heroine, who caroms from country to country around the expanding Napoleonic empire, hooking up with a dazzling array of men (and women) as she goes. A wild ride!”––Carmen Boullosa, author of Texas: The Great Theft
“Very few novels dare to explore the historical representation of women to the extent that Woman in Battle Dress does, with impeccable veracity and bravado. The idea that a woman must pretend to be a man in order to become a physician, and is then punished by being forced back into a woman’s identity, only to escape to New Orleans as a fictional character, works as a Stendhal novel in reverse. Napoleonic France and the colonial Caribbean are chartered by men; New Orleans is extraterritorial, ready for a new saga. A true Doña Quijota, Henriette Faber takes on these roles to gain her freedom in a novel, the only modern space larger than life.”––Julio Ortega, Professor at Brown University, author of Transatlantic Translations
“As detailed as any work of history and as action filled as any swashbuckler, Woman in Battle Dress is not only Antonio Benítez Rojo’s last and most ambitious book, but also his masterpiece. In this graceful English translation of Henriette Faber’s autobiography––more than fiction, less than fact––American readers will have access to one of the most engaging novels to come out of Latin America in recent years.”––Gustavo Pérez-Firmat, Columbia University
“Reviving the Renaissance and Baroque figure of the virago, in Spanish Golden Age theater the mujer varonil, Antonio Benítez Rojo creates a fascinating woman protagonist who dresses and acts like a man, mostly as a qualified medical doctor, while participating in major historical events in Europe and the Caribbean. The reader’s attention is captivated by the suspense generated by the fear that her true sex will be discovered, and entertained by her wiles in trying to prevent it. Woman in Battle Dress is a rich and engaging historical novel.”––Roberto González Echevarría, Sterilng Professor of Hispanic and Comparitve Literature, Yale University, author of Modern Latin American Literature: A Very Short Introduction
WOMAN
IN BATTLE
DRESS
Antonio Benítez-Rojo
Translated by Jessica Ernst Powell
City Lights Books | San Francisco
Woman in Battle Dress
Copyright © 2001, 2015 by The Estate of Antonio Benítez-Rojo
Translation copyright © 2015 by Jessica Ernst Powell
All Rights Reserved
First published as Mujer en traje de batalla by Alfaguara in 2001
Cover art: The Hour Between Wolf and Dog (detail), oil painting by Marc Chagall, 1943
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Benítez Rojo, Antonio, 1931-2005.
[Mujer en traje de batalla. English]
Woman in battle dress / Antonio Benítez Rojo ; translated by Jessica Ernst Powell.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-87286-676-8 (alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-87286-685-0 (ebook)
1. Faber, Henriette, 1791-1856—Fiction. 2. Women physicians—Fiction. I. Powell, Jessica Ernst. II. Title.
PQ7390.B42M8513 2015
863'.64—dc23
2015013717
City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133
To María Cristina Benítez and Hilda Otaño Benítez, always courageous
“The prejudice that had closed women off from any opportunity to practice the professions and trades traditionally reserved for men dramatized the life of a bold and enterprising lady who, dressed as a man and graduated as a surgeon, served as a soldier in Europe without her secret being discovered, only to have it revealed in Cuba in 1823.”
LEVÍ MARRERO, Cuba: Economy and Society
“Don’t bother me with History as theater. What matters here is poetic illusion. . . . ”
ALEJO CARPENTIER, Baroque Concerto
“Everything will have to be reconstructed, invented all over again.”
JOSÉ LEZAMA LIMA, American Expression
“The truth is, doctor, that I no longer know if it happened to me or to my little friend or if I made it up. Although I’m sure that I didn’t make it up. And yet, there are times when I think that I am, in reality, my little friend.”
GUILLERMO CABRERA INFANTE, Three Trapped Tigers
CONTENTS
ABOARD THE SCHOONER: THE COLLECTOR