Infante's Inferno

By Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Book Overview

Hidden behind a cloak of exotic mystery, Cuba is virtually unknown to American citizens. G. Cabrera Infante--in Infante's Inferno and several of his other novels--allows readers to peek behind the curtain surrounding this island and see the vibrant life that existed there before Fidel Castro's regime. Detailing the sexual education and adventures of the author, Infante's Inferno is a lush, erotic, funny book that provides readers with insight into what it was like to grow up in pre-revolutionary Havana. Viewing every girl as a potential lover, and the movies as a place both for entertainment and potential sexual escapades, Cabrera Infante captures the adolescent male mindset with a great deal of fun and self-consciousness. With his hallmark of puns and wordplay--excellently translated by Suzanne Jill Levine--Cabrera Infante has hilariously updated the Don Juan myth in a tropical setting.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1564783847
• ISBN13: 9781564783844
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Length: 410 Pages
• Weight: 1.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 8.9"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Cabrera Infante y sus memorias eróticas

Un estupendo libro en el que el escritor cubano Cabrera Infante hace un larguísimo repaso de sus experiencias con las mujeres en la Habana, desde la niñez hasta la juventud. Muchísimo humor, acrobacias lingüísticas, erotismo y una impresionante colección de caracteres femeninos de todo tipo, además de ser un libro sin ninguna carga intelectual o intelectualoide. Silvio Rodríguez decía que los amores cobardes no llegan a historias. Con este libro, Cabrera Infante prueba que todos los amores, ya sean cobardes, valientes, frustrados o nonatos pueden llegar a ser estupendos relatos.

Brilliant, wonderful and hilarious

The greatest living Cuban writer, and one of the most important in all Latin America, Cabrera Infante's "Infante's Inferno," the English version of "La Habana para un Infante Difunto" is a wise, brilliant, wonderful and hilarious musing of a young man's coming of age in pre-Revolutionary Havana. A rich, delicious work to be savored like a mojito or your mother's caramel custard (flan, assuming your mother knows how to make one). Although grounded in a very specific time and place, Cabrera Infante writes for the ages, a tropical Dickens, only funnier and scabrous. After all, there are few things more important in life than women and movies.