cover image Cuba: True Stories

Cuba: True Stories

. Travelers' Tales Guides, $17.95 (295pp) ISBN 978-1-885211-62-0

In Travelers' Tales Cuba: True Stories, editor Tom Miller (Trading with the Enemy) has gathered 38 essays by Western ex-pats, Cuban exiles and travelers of all stripes, including Cristina Garcia, Pico Iyer, James Michener, Andrei Codrescu and Robert Stone. Novelist Elisio Alberto recollects his 1970s stint at the magazine Cuba Internacional, ""a real Gothic cave where chance had gathered together twelve or thirteen madmen who were not afraid of anybody or anything, not even of daydreaming, perhaps the bravest thing of all in this most extraordinary world designed by God or the Devil."" From his rental car, Dave Eggars comes to understand something of Cubans' reality: ""That becomes the point it had not been the plan at the outset but now is the mission, one thrust upon us the picking up of people, because, as we learn soon enough, the most common roadside scenery in Cuba, besides the horse-drawn wagons and broken-down classic American cars, is its hitchhikers."" (Aug.)