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Before Night Falls
Reinaldo Arenas
Memoir, 1992. Translated from Spanish
Memoir of growing up rural and poor in Oriente, then persecution as a gay writer under Castro's regime.
Books by country North America
Books set in Cuba
Six books that put you in Cuba. Five are by writers from Cuba and set there, starting with Before Night Falls and Dreaming in Cuban. The other is a wider pick, by someone who knows the place well.
About the literature of Cuba
Cuba's literature is bound up with José Martí, the poet and independence leader whose Versos sencillos appeared in 1891. He was killed fighting Spanish forces in 1895. Since the 1959 revolution, Cuban writing has been divided between the island and exile, and revolution, departure and Havana's hard years recur throughout.
Reinaldo Arenas's Before Night Falls is a memoir moving from a poor rural childhood in Oriente to persecution as a gay writer under Castro's regime. José Lezama Lima's Paradiso is a dense, baroque novel about a Havana family in the early twentieth century. Pedro Juan Gutiérrez's Dirty Havana Trilogy offers raw stories of hunger and survival in 1990s Havana, while Cristina García's Dreaming in Cuban, written in English, traces three generations split between Havana and Brooklyn.
By writers from Cuba
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Dreaming in Cuban
Cristina García
Novel, 1992
Three generations of a Cuban family split between Havana and Brooklyn, showing how revolution divides households and memory.
Dirty Havana Trilogy
Pedro Juan Gutiérrez
Novel, 1998. Translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
Raw, unflinching stories of hunger, sex and survival in Havana during the 1990s Special Period.
Memories of Underdevelopment
Edmundo Desnoes
Novel, 1965. Translated from Spanish
A bourgeois Havana man stays behind after 1961, observing the Bay of Pigs and Missile Crisis era city.
Paradiso
José Lezama Lima
Novel, 1966. Translated from Spanish by Gregory Rabassa
Dense, baroque coming-of-age novel of a Havana family in the early twentieth century.
Wider picks
By long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well, or folk tales, poetry and history with a strong feel for Cuba.
Dancing with Cuba
Alma Guillermoprieto
Memoir, 2004
Wider pick: By a Mexican journalist who taught dance in Havana
A young dance teacher's year in 1970 Havana, seeing the revolution's hopes and hardships through her students.
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