Havana: The Making Of Cuban Culture

This is the first sweeping account of Havana and its cultural history in English. The author introduces us to a marginal city with roots in the sixteenth century, taking us through the periods when it was a sugar boomtown, pulled between empires, a decadent metropolis, a site of both cultural revolution and relative stagnation during the development of the Revolution to its revival in the 1990s. Cosmopolitan playground and nationalist vanguard, Havana has developed its own original style while at the same time both reflecting and directing the complicated politics of the whole of Cuba. This book offers a concise guide to one of the most intriguing cities of the twenty-first century.