En La Noche Del Mundo.

Rodriguez Acosta, Ofelia. En La Noche Del Mundo. Habana: La Verònica, 1940. 16.5 cm, 242 pp.; textblock VG+,  in orig. wrapper, chipping and bent, separated at foot. Author’s dedication in ink on p. 9, dated 1954, Habana.

Signed, first edition of Cuban suffragist Ofelia Rodriguez Acosta’s novel En la noche del mundo, one of Cuba's earliest progressive novels about homosexuality. Two of the main characters are gay men living with one another, and their relationship is depicted with great sympathy. The complexity and tenderness of this portrayal exists in contrast to the other highly melodramatic or pathological/sexualized descriptions of homosexuality in hispano-american literature before 1945.