Cuba and the Night - (Vintage Contemporaries) by Pico Iyer (Paperback)

About the Book

Having captivated readers with such gems of travel writing as Video Night in Kathmandu, Pico Iyer now presents a novel whose central character is another place: the melancholy, ebullient, and dazzlingly inconsistent island that is Castro's Cuba. "On almost every page you can smell the dust, the cheap perfume and the rum of Havana today, or better still, tonight".--Los Angeles Times.

Book Synopsis

Having captivated readers with such gems of travel writing as Video Night in Kathmandu, Pico Iyer now presents a novel whose central character is another place: the melancholy, ebullient, and dazzlingly inconsistent island that is Castro's Cuba. -On almost every page you can smell the dust, the cheap perfume and the rum of Havana today, or better still, tonight.---Los Angeles Times.

From the Back Cover

Richard, the jaded photojournalist who is Iyer's narrator, thinks he believes in nothing. He knows that the most beautiful women cruising the Calle 21 aren't women at all. And he strongly suspects that the ravishing cubana named Lourdes is only looking for a ticket to America - just as Lourdes fears that she may be nothing more than Richard's Caribbean souvenir. Yet, almost against their will, these two people fall in love. And what ensues is a story of passion and regret that is moving, arousing, and voluptuously atmospheric. A story that could only be told by the noted travel writer Pico Iyer, it is an ironic paean to a place where everyone has two fatherlands: "Cuba and the night".

About the Author

Pico Iyer has written nonfiction books on globalism, Japan, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, and forgotten places, and novels on Revolutionary Cuba and Islamic mysticism. He regularly writes about literature for The New York Review of Books; about travel for the Financial Times; and about global culture and the news for Time, The New York Times, and magazines around the world.