Cuba: The Land of Miracles
A Journey Through Modern Cuba
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
For a growing number of British holidaymakers, Cuba is a Caribbean paradise, but it is also a land of cutbacks and economic instability. Stephen Smith comes to live on the island, and his search for the real Cuba inevitably becomes a search for Fidel Castro too. Before meeting his quarry, Smith travels extensively through the 'land of miracles' in an old American automobile. His highly-personalised account features a bloody initiation into a voodoo-like cult, dining on giant rat, and checking into the Love Hotel. And he goes on manoeuvres in the Everglades with armed, but not especially competent, Cuban exiles dreaming of a second Bay of Pigs. With disarming wit and considerable insight, Stephen Smith investigates a country where communism and voodoo coexist, and where the influence of its leader of forty years continues to throw a long shadow.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A writer's writer, Smith's reportage is nearly flawless as he recounts his journey in search of the real Land of Miracles (a sardonic reference made by Cubans to the beautiful but impoverished island). In heat "like being swaddled in freshly steamed laundry, though not so aromatic," Smith leads readers through formerly grand hotels, local religions that mix odd histories with blood sacrifice, and other unique cultural landmarks (the one horse town on "Treasure Island," the 50-year-old cars, the weapons trade). Genuine and game, Smith is equally at ease recording a heart-to-heart with a down-and-out prostitute as he is a side-splitting account of a tango lesson in a tiny apartment, in which he learns how to hurl his partner "and save her in the nick of time from dashing her brains out against a refrigerator with a languid and yet utterly masculine catch." A large cast of characters fleshes out Smith's gutsy wanderings, including both Castro and his dissidents, one of whom sums up the island's forlorn beauty and diminished spirit thusly: "After 36 years of repression ... we're an exhausted people... I believe that we're peaceful-more prepared for receiving tourists than making war." Though earmarked for travelers, this could easily become a classic look into the shuttered world of Cuba.
