When the Cages Fall Open — Chantel Acevedo

When the Cages Fall Open is a sweeping, polyphonic portrait of a man seen through the eyes of those who loved him, feared him, and betrayed him. At its center is Felix—a zookeeper in 1960s Cuba, an exile in London, and finally a dying man in Miami.  His story is pieced together like a puzzle that can never fully be solved by one who knew him only as an absence and seeks to know him before it is too late. In Cuba, during the Missile Crisis, Felix risks everything for an illicit love affair with René, a fellow keeper. In a society where homosexuality is branded “counterrevolutionary,” their tenderness unfolds in the shadow of danger, betrayal, and political oppression. In London, Felix and his wife Anabel navigate exile and reinvention, while an aspiring actress named Claudia finds herself drawn into their orbit, her ambitions and desires colliding with Felix’s own hunger for connection. Years later, Virgilio—Anabel’s devoted brother—recounts the disintegration of Felix’s marriage and the exile that follows, even as he steps in to protect the family Felix abandoned. From Anabel, long silent about her complicity in the events that forced Felix’s flight from Cuba, to Rita, the daughter who knew him differently, each voice brings a sliver of truth. Together, these testimonies form a mosaic of longing, deception, survival, and reconciliation. Spanning Havana, London, and Miami, Acevedo’s luminous, formally inventive novel explores exile, forbidden love, fractured families, the nature of truth, and the stories we tell to make sense of the people we cannot forget.