Synopses & Reviews
In 1970 Jorge Edwards was sent by socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende as his country's first envoy to break the diplomatic blockade that had sealed Cuba for over a decade. His arrival coincided with the turning point of the revolution, when Castro began to repress the very intellectuals he once courted. In Kafkaesque detail, Edwards records the four explosive months he spent in Havana trying to open a Chilean embassy and his disenchantment with the revolution. His stay culminated in the arrest of his friend Heberto Padillathe first imprisonment of a well-known writer by the regimefor giving Edwards a "negative view of the revolution." In a menacing midnight political debate with Edwards immediately after Padilla's arrest, Castro argued that in this phase of the revolution, bourgeois writers would no longer have "anything to do in Cuba." Castro accused Edwards of "conduct hostile to the revolution" and declared him "persona non grata." The winner of the Cervantes prizethe Spanish language equivalent to the Nobel Prize for literatureJorge Edwards' memoir splendidly recounts this time and the wrath of Castro.
Synopsis
- Jorge Edwards is a winner of the Cervantes prize, the equivalent in the Spanish language of the Nobel Prize for literature. His memoir was the first by a left wing Latin American intellectual to openly criticize the Cuban regime
-Cuba is rarely away from the headlines; a number of prominent left wing intellectuals--including Jose Saramago and Eduardo Galeano--have recently broken with Castro over his recent use of the death penalty
Synopsis
In Kafkaesque detail, Edwards records the four explosive months he spent in Havana trying to open a Chilean embassy and his disenchantment with the revolution.