In a library on Paseo de Marti in Havana - a single strip light, a stopped clock, a thrashed fan - I ask if they have anything by G. Cabrera Infante. The Cuban novelist was expelled from his country's writers' union in 1968, by which time he had already spent three years in exile. He has vehemently rehearsed exactly how underground his books are in his native land in a new collection of vindicatory essays, Mea Cuba, which I have boldly taken into Havana as hand luggage.

LRB 24 November 1994 | PDF Download