Before Night Falls is the autobiography of Reinaldo Arenas, a gay Cuban writer who suffered seriously at the hands of the Castro regime. We know from the outset that he writes from New York City, dying early of AIDS, but as the novel winds it way from early erotic memoir to tortuous diary of a "counterrevolutionary" through prison, labour camps and torn down convents, you begin to wonder how anyone survived such persecution. Gripping throughout, and difficult to believe how recently this occurred.