"This is a really wonderful book."--Alma Guillermoprieto, author of Dancing with Cuba "Todd Ramón Ochoa is a damn good writer, and this is a masterpiece, in several ways at once. It's an intensely researched ethnography, a meticulously observed chronicle of the daily mechanics of Cuban life in the humblest of circumstances, and a detailed drill-down into the dynamics of spirit possession. Most of all, it's a ripping good read featuring fully drawn characters, with his unforgettable godmother Isidra (familiar to readers of his previous Society of the Dead ) front and center. It unfolds like a good movie, but no director could capture all the nuance -- or the spirit -- that Ochoa gives us."--Ned Sublette, author of Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo "Todd Ramón Ochoa is a magnificent ethnographer. Monumental long-term research and beautifully anchored writing come together to tell a profound story about the legacy of African devotions in Cuba. Outstanding in every way, profound and compassionate, this is anthropology at its best!"--Ruth Behar is the Victor Haim Perera Collegiate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and author of An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba and Lucky Broken Girl "There is an elegance to Ochoa's style which correlates to the elegance of the orisha.

Ochoa does not apologize for Cuban religion (a term he doesn't use), nor explain away the foibles of his subjects. Things are as they are, and this is Cuba in all its magnificent desperation." --Donald J. Cosentino, author of Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou and In Extremis: Death and Life in Twenty-First-Century Haitian Art "It will not be long before A Party for Lazarus is recognized as a classic anthropological text that teaches ethnography in an accessible and provocative way. Without compromising its intellectual heft, the book boasts a wonderful sense of dramatic pacing, suspense, and characterization."--Elizabeth Pérez, author of Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions.