In a lush Caribbean setting, Midnight at Sea depicts an eccentric cast of characters. Despite her many travels throughout the world, Chiara marvels at Canuba, where ‘magic realism’ is everyday life. Five narrators reminisce about the years they’ve shared with her; like memory itself, their thoughts move from the present toward the past. Enthralled by their island reverie, she and her friends must finally face the darker side of paradise...

“In Midnight at Sea (2025), Hoyt Rogers continues his lengthy account of a fictional journalist and her fictional island in the second literary novel of his Caribbean Trilogy, following Sailing to Noon (2023)… Sicilian-born, Princeton-educated journalist Chiara Trigona, the protagonist of Rogers’ previous novel, appears in this one as the addressee of monologues by five people who loved her over the years… Rogers’ novel takes the form of long chapters, each of which moves backward in time by section toward the moment when the speaker first met Chiara… The author renders each voice with such specificity and vivacity that readers will be content to accompany them through whatever territory they wish. Canuba may not be real, but in Rogers’ evocation of its history, its art, and its denizens, he captures… the irrepressible invention and intoxication of Caribbean culture. An endlessly immersive and at times awe-inspiring middle volume of a postmodern epic.”
     Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Sailing to Noon, the previous volume of The Caribbean Trilogy, winner of the Independent Press Award for Hispanic/Latin Fiction:

‘Rich and multifarious, Sailing to Noon has enormous vitality and texture: it is a big performance—the epic myth of Canuba.’ 
—Jonathan Galassi

‘I really felt this novel: I entered its geography, saw and smelled and moved in it, which is a tribute to its vivid intimacy.’ 
—Siri Hustvedt

‘You should put this book in a tightly sealed drawer; otherwise, it’s so alive it might run away.’ 
—Edmund White

‘By the time the rollicking conclusion arrives, it’s evident there are many more tales to tell of this island: Canuba becomes a character in and of itself. Rogers employs satire, sex, and drama in wondrous ways.’ 
—Kirkus Reviews 

Hoyt Rogers has published his fiction and poetry in a wide range of periodicals, including The New England Review, AGNI, and The Fortnightly Review. As a prize-winning translator, editor, and essayist, he has worked with Viking, Knopf, Farrar Straus, Yale, Seagull, and various presses large and small. He has collaborated with Paul Auster, Yves Bonnefoy, Lincoln Kirstein, Philippe Claudel, and many others. He is the author of a poetry collection, Thresholds, the novel Sailing to Noon, and a study of the Late Renaissance. Please visit hoytrogers.com.


Artemisia Vento is the pseudonym of a travel journalist whose work appeared in countless magazines from 1978 onward, under different bylines. She specialized in writing about islands, above all in the Caribbean and Mediterranean, with a focus on village traditions and nature. At the end of 2016, she abandoned her career and withdrew from the world; she now lives a cloistered existence somewhere in Asia. The location of her community, and whether it is Buddhist, Christian, Vedic, interfaith, or secular, are secrets she keeps to herself.


Frank Báez has published eight books of poetry, as well as fiction and non-fiction works. In 2006, he received the Short Stories Prize of the Santo Domingo International Book Fair for You’ll Have to Pay the Shrinks Yourself; and in 2007, the Salomé Ureña National Poetry Prize for Postales. He was selected for the Hay Festival in 2017 as a member of Bogota 39, the best Latin American writers under forty. From 2023 to 2024 he was a Mellon High Impact Scholar, at the University of Texas at Austin. His latest books include What the Sea Brought Ashore, Dismantling My Father’s Library, and The End of the World Came to My ‘Hood.