Daína Chaviano (Author)

Menippean satire is a mode of narrative in which an alienated, displaced, highly cosmopolitan writer, often "bi-located" with a foot in different cultural and linguistic worlds, is writing a type of narrative that can appeal to an alienated, cosmopolitan reader, who wishes to renew contact with the sources of consciousness from which civilization, or war, or exile, has alienated her or him. This type of literature combines the most sophisticated philosophical or religious speculation with a return to pre-rational, preliterate modes of thinking and genres of story telling. In Chaviano's protagonists this takes a form analogous to that of the shaman, a religious practitioner, who brings healing and knowledge to a disharmonious tribal society by detaching temporarily from waking consciousness through trance, flying to the land of the spirits and ancestors, and returning with knowledge and  healing. (Complete text in PDF).