Teeming with life and compulsively readable, the pieces gathered together in The Tribe aggregate into an extraordinary mosaic of Cuba today. Carlos Manuel Alvarez, one of the most exciting young writers in Latin America, employs the cronica form - a genre unique to Latin American writing that blends reportage, narrative non-fiction, and novelistic forms - to illuminate a particularly turbulent period in Cuban history, from the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with the US, to the death of Fidel Castro, to the convulsions of the San Isidro Movement.
Unique, edgy and stylishly written, The Tribe shows a society in flux, featuring sportsmen in exile, artists, nurses, underground musicians and household names, dissident poets, the hidden underclass at a landfill, migrants attempting to make their way across Central America, fugitives escaping the FBI, dealers from the black market, as well as revelers and policemen in the noisy Havana night. It is a major work of reportage by one of Granta's Best of Young Spanish-Language novelists.
Carlos Manuel Alvarez divides his time between Havana and Mexico City. He was included in Bogota39's best Latin American writers under 40 in 2017 and in Granta's Best Young Spanish Novelists in 2021. The Tribe, his first book, appeared in 2017 with Sexto Piso. He is also the author of two novels, The Fallen (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2019), and Falsa Guerra (forthcoming with Fitzcarraldo Editions).
Title: The Tribe: Portraits of Cuba
Author: Álvarez, Carlos Manuel
ISBN: 9781913097912
Binding:
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
Publication Date: 2022-05-11
Number of Pages: 336
Weight: 0.3201 kg
'There is magic in these pages...[T]his book tells the actual story of Cuba as it exists today.'
- Jon Lee Anderson
'Alvarez has smuggled an important ethnographic work inside the form of an entertaining and well-written cronica.'
- Alex Payne, Buzz Magazine
'Alvarez does not try to instruct or speculate. He does not write on whether the Revolution succeeded or failed. He does not determine whether the leader was a hero or a tyrant. His book is not an explanation: it is .... the history of a country told through its people.'
- Maria Teresa Hernandez, AP News
'This is one of those books you'll read in a single sitting. Conveying readers to the turbulent landscapes of Cuba's recent political past, it offers a refreshing assessment of the country outside of typical historic tropes, giving voice to ordinary Cubans, from artists and nurses to underground musicians and dissident poets.'
- Lucy Kehoe, Suitcase Magazine