Map Drawn By A Spy - Softcover

Guillermo Cabrera Infante; Mark Fried

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0914671782 ISBN 13: 9780914671787

Publisher: Archipelago Books, 2017

Synopsis

Both lucid and sincere, Map Drawn by a Spy is a moving portrayal of a fractured society and a writer's struggles to come to terms with his national identity.

Found in an envelope in Guillermo Cabrera Infante's house after his death in 2005, Map Drawn by a Spy is the world-renowned writer's autobiographical account of the last four months he spent in his country. In 1965, following his mother's death, Infante returns to Cuba from Brussels, where he is employed as a cultural attache at the Cuban embassy. When a few days later his permission to return to Europe is revoked, Infante begins a period of suspicion, uncertainty, and disillusion. Unable to leave the country, denied access to party officials, yet still receiving checks for his work in Belgium, Infante discovers the reality of Cuba under Fidel Castro: imprisonment of homosexuals, silencing of writers, the closing of libraries and newspapers, and the consolidation of power. Both lucid and sincere, Map Drawn by a Spy is a moving portrayal of a fractured society and a writer's struggles to come to terms with his national identity.

About this title

Review:

"This book has greatly moved me, not only due to the fondness I have always felt for Cabrera Infante, but also because of what it reveals about his character, the city of Havana, and the era of the Cuban Revolution... It is a bare and atrocious testimony of what it means when, gone the euphoria and joy of victory, a revolution transforms into supreme power, that Saturn who sooner or later devours his own children, beginning with those he finds closest, who most often are the greatest." -- Mario Vargas Llosa

"To say that I have read Guillermo Cabrera Infante's Map Drawn by a Spy in one sitting, and with great enthusiasm, is to cut myself short." -- Juan Goytisolo, El Pais

"The book reads with the same vertigo as that in which it was written... Map Drawn by a Spy is the intimate cartography of a farewell." --Juan Bonilla, El Mundo

About the Author:

Winner of the 1997 Cervantes Prize and widely considered one of the foremost Cuban writers of the 20th century, Guillermo Cabrera Infante was the author of five novels, four screenplays, and multiple collections of short stories. Born in the small town of Gibara in 1929, Infante was initially a supporter of the Cuban Revolution and served under Castro as director of the National Board of Culture. After being detained in Cuba for four months in 1968, he spent the rest of his life in exile as a dissident. His most well-known work, Tres Tristes Tigres, labeled as counterrevolutionary by the Cuban government, has been compared to Joyce's Ulysses. Map Drawn by a Spy is the third work by Infante to be published posthumously.

Mark Fried lives in Ottawa, Canada. He is the translator of Eduardo Galeano's Children of the Days, Mirrors, Voices of Time, Upside Down, Soccer in Sun and Shadow, Walking Words, and We Say No. He is also the translator of the historical collection Echoes of the Mexican-American War and works by Severo Sarduy, Emilia Ferreiro, Jose Ignacio Lopez Vigil, Oscar Ugarteche, and Rafael Barajas Duran.

About this edition

• Publisher: Archipelago Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0914671782
• ISBN 13: 9780914671787
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240