Havana: Autobiography of a City by Alfredo Estrada, Alfredo Jose Estrada

From the Publisher

Havana: Autobiography of a City takes readers from the Plaza de Armas, the tree-lined square where Havana was founded by conquistadors in 1519, to the Malecón, the elegant boulevard along the shore where Fidel Castro rode a Russian tank in triumph.  Estrada portrays the adventurers and dreamers who left their mark on Havana, including José Martí, martyr for Cuban independence; and Ernest Hemingway, the most American of writers who became an unabashed Habanero. The book is a deeply personal account of a love affair with a city, as well as an entertaining portrait of a place not easily forgotten.  

Boyd Childress Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information - Library Journal

Few cities parallel the charm and grace of Cuba's old Havana. Yet Havana loses three buildings a day to decay and collapse; 1400 structures are abandoned every year. In short, the Havana of the 19th and early 20th centuries—to say nothing of its 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-century remnants—will not be around much longer unless drastic renovation and restoration occur, which is unlikely. These dire facts make this small book, a virtual travelog through the heart of "the Pearl of the Antilles," that much more appealing. Estrada (founder, Hispanicmagazine; Welcome to Havana) guides us through the city while relating the history of Cuba, his focus always on Havana. As much a tale of tobacco, sugar, and slaves, this delightful account leaves no stone unturned and reveals fascinating historical insights. Estrada's chapters on Ernest Hemingway in Havana and social life during the casino/mobster era are pure gems. He spares neither expansionist U.S. policies nor Fidel Castro's socialism from blame for Cuba's present state. Highly recommended.

Kirkus Reviews

A canci-n de amor to a stereotyped, lovely lost city. Estrada, the Austin-based editor-in-chief of Vista magazine, wanders the streets and byways of his native city and gathers the stories of the place. "Havana remains oddly familiar," he writes. "Even if you've never gone, you know what cliches to expect, and you think of conga lines and communism, Ricky Ricardo as well as Che Guevara." Estrada takes pains to work the middle ground between those who love Castro and those who hate him, writing both sympathetically and critically of the regime; he notes, for instance, that Cuba has the best-trained doctors in Latin America, for which the Miami anti-Castro crowd would condemn him as a fellow traveler, while observing at the same time that even aspirin is hard to find on the island, for which the government would likely consider him a counterrevolutionary. If America and Cuba are locked in a love embrace that resembles a death grip, Estrada writes that it's because they need each other-and that "if Castro hadn't existed, Americans would have had to invent him." (Later, he notes that Kennedy and Castro were both corona men and wonders "how history might have changed if the two leaders had been able to settle their differences over a cigar.") Evoking Hemingway and Mart', Che and the Mob, and other familiars, while also bringing in some lesser-knowns (memorably, the pirate Francois Leclerc, a.k.a. Jambe-de-bois, or Pegleg, who may have been the model for Long John Silver), Estrada delivers what amounts to a series of impressionistic sketches a la Eduardo Galeano, charged with meaning and emotion without descending into nostalgia. The resulting narrative flow is sometimes a bit herky-jerky, likethe old cars that line Havana's streets, but mostly it resembles a good samba and is good fun. A pleasure for the armchair traveler and old Cuba hands alike-except those who'll be maddened by Estrada's refusal to take sides.

Product Details

• ISBN: 1403975094
  
• ISBN-13: 9781403975096
• Format: Hardcover, 288pp
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Pub. Date: March 2007

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents