Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2003
400 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
Waiting for Snow in Havana is both an exorcism and an ode to a paradise lost. For the Cuba of Carlos's youth -- with its lizards and turquoise seas and sun-drenched siestas -- becomes an island of condemnation once a cigar-smoking guerrilla named Fidel Castro ousts President Batista on January 1, 1959. Suddenly the music in the streets sounds like gunfire. Christmas is made illegal, political dissent leads to imprisonment, and too many of Carlos's friends are leaving Cuba for a place as far away and unthinkable as the United States. Carlos will end up there, too, and fulfill his mother's dreams by becoming a modern American man -- even if his soul remains in the country he left behind.
National Book Awards, 2003
"[A] beautifully fashioned memoir" - PW
"In this open, honest, and at times angry memoir, Eire bares his soul completely and captivates the reader in the process." - Booklist
""Wait. One more memory . . . " They come in beautiful profusion, coalescing into a young life in a lyric memoir of the utterly vanished. " - Kirkus
"I am utterly persuaded, on the basis of this book, that Eire has the makings of a first-rate novelist." - LA Times
"Eire's tone is so urgent and so vividly personal...that his unsparing indictments of practically everyone concerned, including himself, seem all the more remarkable."New Yorker
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