Havana: A Subtropical Delirium by Mark Kurlansky: book review

Havana: A Subtropical Delirium (2017) is about the capital of Cuba.

Kurlansky begins with descriptions of Havana from different perspectives, in which the capital city of Cuba is described as ‘diabolically beautiful’ athough the harbour – ‘once the most perfect harbor in the Caribbean’ is now ‘a bit dated.’ It’s a city of ‘open windows’ but ‘in Havana every splash of light has its dark spot.’

He discusses books about Havana, such as Cirilo Villaverde’s Cecilia Valdes (1882), Our Man in Havana (1958) by Grahame Greene, and Inconsolable Memories (1965) by Edmundo Desnoes. He describes the heat and the sweat that governs the lives of the people of Havana, the Habaneros.

Not only is the city beautiful, but so are the women. Greene describes their beauty as ‘to live in Havana was to live in a factory that turned out human beauty on a conveyor-belt.’

He writes of Hemingway and the Havana Hilton, Fidel Castro’s May Day speeches and fishing – and the ‘most ego ever squeezed into a single picture frame’ – a photograph of the young Castro and the aging Hemingway.

From music to movie stars, from cuba libre to food, from art to architecture, from history to politics, and from baseball to the revolution, Kurlansky covers a broad spectrum of topics, exploring the blended cultures and vibrant, intense lifestyle of the city: talking, arguing, debating, writing, singing, playing music, cooking.

Kurlansky’s writing is an evocative descriptive experience, not from the streetscape, but from a bird’s eye panoramic sweep, from harbour to home, that dips into the pockets of his 35-year memory of living in Havana. He relives everything that Havana means to him, without swathes of detail, but with a rapid brush as if recoating, rather than restoring, a painting – and a beautiful one at that.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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