JS Tennant in Cuba
Author JS Tennant has been in Cuba over the past few weeks, ahead of William Collins’s publication on 16 July of his original and brilliant Mrs Gargantua: Reports from Cuba (the collage cover of which is designed by Sean Mackaoui, creator of the RCL bird logo).
At a time of heightened tension and energy shortages in Cuba, James was revisiting places he writes about in the book (there are fantastic photographs on his Instagram) and writing a piece for the Financial Times magazine, which appeared this weekend.
The advance quotes for this book could not be better:
‘Mrs Gargantua is a treasure chest full of rare and exquisitely rendered stories about the remarkable characters whose lives and actions became interwoven with Cuba’s history. Columbus, Cortés, Churchill and Castro; all are here, along with many more, including a woman who loved gorillas, Napoleon’s deathbed doctor, and the guardian of a Soviet nuclear missile silo. As our guide, Tennant is an amiable, erudite writer who shares sides to Cuba few of us have seen before, underpinned by his love for that most extraordinary of Caribbean islands. ¡Viva Cuba!’ — Jon Lee Anderson
‘In this book JS Tennant shows us a mix of the fantastic creatures and resilient humans who inhabit that strange island: Cuba. Wrapped in the mists of isolation and entrenched in an ideology that has become obsolete in most of the world, Cuba has a curious reality: its pre-revolutionary time didn’t just fade away, it froze abruptly. Tennant explores such relics of that past to show the idiosyncrasy of a people and a revolution that has managed to exist in a space-time of its own.’ — Gioconda Belli, poet and former Sandinista guerrilla
‘Tennant accomplishes a rare feat in Mrs Gargantua: he lifts the veil that has long shrouded the idea of Cuba, preserving its allure even as he subjects it to lucid scrutiny. His Cuba emerges not only as myth or mirage, but as a political bestiary, at once real, marvellous, and profoundly human.’ — Carlos Fonseca, author of Natural History
‘Mrs Gargantua is one of the most original, most insightful books about the wonderfully complex island of Cuba. I could not put it down.’ — Alberto Manguel