Cuba in Splinters

Eleven Stories from the New Cuba

Think Cuba, you’re likely to think bearded revolutionaries in fatigues. Salsa. Sugar cane.

Rock ‘n’ roll, zombies, drugs anomie and angst do not generally figure in our mental images of a country that’s assumed an outsized place in the American imagination. But fresh from the tropics, in Cuba in Splinters a sparkling package of stories we’re assured are fictional that’s exactly what you’ll find. Eleven writers largely unknown outside Cuba depict a world that veers from a hyperreal Havana in decay, against a backdrop of oblivious drug-toting German tourists, to a fantasy land or is it? where vigilant Cubans bar the door to zombies masquerading as health inspectors. Sex and knife-fights, stutterers and addicts, losers and lost literary classics: welcome to a raw and genuine island universe closed to casual visitors.