Bringing together fiction from celebrated writers, The Book of Havana is an anthology of short stories charting the social and and cultural change of Havana over the last fifty years, creating a literary map of the city.
The stories gathered in this anthology reflect the many complex challenges Havana's citizens have had to endure as a result of their country's political isolation - from the hardships of the 'Special Period', to the pitfalls of Cuba's schizophrenic currency system, to the indignities of becoming a cheap tourist destination for well-heeled Westerners. Moving through various moments in its recent history, as well as through different neighbourhoods - from the prefab, Soviet-era maze of Alamar, to the bars and nightclubs of the Malecon and Vedado - these stories also demonstrate the defiance of Havana: surviving decades of economic disappointment with a flair for the comic, the surreal and the fantastical that remains as fresh as the first dreams of revolution. Translated from the Spanish by Orsola Casagrande and Seamas Carraher.
