Cuba on the Verge

Just ninety miles from United States shores yet inaccessible to most Americans until recently, Cuba fascinates as much as it confounds. In Cuba on the Verge, twelve of our most celebrated writers, both from Cuba and abroad, investigate the country’s period of momentous transition.

These essays span the spectrum, from Carlos Manuel Álvarez’s story of being among the last generation of Cubans to be raised under Fidel Castro to Patricia Engel’s look at how Cuba’s capital has changed through her years of riding across it with her taxi driver friend; from The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson (who traveled with President Obama on the first trip to Cuba by an American president since the twenties) on being a foreigner in Cuba during the Special Period to Francisco Goldman on the Tropicana, then and now, to Leonardo Padura on the religion that is Cuban baseball.

Cuba on the Verge is the definitive account of—and a unique glimpse at—a moment of upheaval and reinvention whose effects promise to reverberate across years and nations.