Down but Not Out

Dirty Havana Trilogy, by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Farrar, Straus, 392 pp., $25)

THOUGH it makes no reference to politics, Dirty Havana Trilogy is invaluable for an understanding of Cuba’s predicament. In Pedro Juan Gutiérrez’s novel, the consequences of the Castroist “revolutionary will” are laid out with a rough-edged honesty that would be remarkable even for a writer in a free country. Writing in the certain knowledge his work could never be published at home, Gutiérrez offers powerful proof that a free man’s imagination will not be regimented in the service of a political utopia.

RK

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Roger Kaplan

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Dirty Havana Trilogy, by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Farrar, Straus, 392 pp., $25)

THOUGH it makes no reference to politics, Dirty Havana Trilogy is invaluable for an understanding of Cuba’s predicament. In Pedro Juan Gutiérrez’s novel, the consequences of the Castroist “revolutionary will” are laid out with a rough-edged honesty that would be remarkable even for a writer in a free country. Writing in the certain knowledge his work could never be published at home, Gutiérrez offers powerful proof that a free man’s imagination will not be regimented in the service of a political utopia.