View of Dawn in Tropics

by Guillermo Cabrera Infante and CABRERA INFANTE GUILLERMO

Book Overview

Una breve historia de Cuba por uno de sus m s grandes art fices literarios. Posicionado entre la historia y la poes a en prosa, Guillermo Cabrera Infante repasa los avatares de su Cuba natal desde los... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0571151868
• ISBN13: 9780571151868
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Faber & Faber Limited
• Length: 193 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 1.0" x 1.0"

Customer Reviews

A Horse of a Different Color

This has got to be one of the most unusual, original, history books that I have ever read. It consists of presenting anecdotes (devoid of names at that!)to represent the different periods of the history of Cuba. Somehow, such a technique makes the history seem more personal, with humor interspaced with the cruelty of some of the episodes.

A warped history lesson

A cracked, tragic, wickedly funny overview of Cuban history, this is not quite a novel, nor a short-story collection, nor a series of prose-poems... I'm not certain what to make of it, really. The book is composed of a series of brief vignettes, ranging from exactly one sentence to several pages, which essentially act as snapshots of various incidents in Cuban history. It takes in every era of "that long, sad, unfortunate island" and includes along the way an awful lot of tyranny, warfare, and bloodshed, which the author seems to think constitutes the spine of his native land's history.All of this may not sound like your idea of fun, and I'll admit that the book sometimes lapses into a monotonous litany of executions and similar nastiness. But G. Cabrera Infante is a genuinely funny guy, who can put more pitch-black humor in one page than an Evelyn Waugh can pack into fifty. Some of the episodes here are little masterpieces of concision. The author puts forth his rancorous vision with impressive skill, which makes this book worth reading.