cover image Mea Cuba

Mea Cuba

Guillermo Cabrena Infante, G. Cabrera Infante. Farrar Straus Giroux, $23 (503pp) ISBN 978-0-374-20497-6

This informative, entertaining collection of Infante's essays, speeches and book reviews features the viewpoint of an anti-Castroite expelled from Cuba's Union of Writers and Artists as ``a traitor to the revolutionary cause.'' Infante (Infante's Inferno), born in 1929, has been in exile since 1965, living mostly in Madrid and London. Antic and cheerfully defiant, he here expresses scathing disgust over Castro's policy toward Cuba's gay writers and discusses several of them. Infante's favorite is clearly Virgilio Pinera, whose work he predicts ``will live, twist and giggle forever.'' He also introduces us to Lydia Cabrera, whom he calls Cuba's greatest woman writer. The collection includes a masterful piece on the reactions of eminent foreign writers who have visited his homeland, such as Federico Garcia Lorca, Graham Greene and Edna O'Brien. Quirky, unpredictable, often hilarious, Infante's book tells us much about the effect of the Cuban revolution on Cuban literature. (Nov.)