First edition of Cabrera Infante’s first major novel: a key work in the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s and a landmark in Cuban literature.

‘In 1964, the Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante won the Biblioteca Breve prize in Spain for a novel in progress with the seemingly optimistic title of “Vista del amanecer en el trópico” (“A view of dawn in the Tropics”). By the time he rewrote it for publication, its title had become a tongue twister, Tres tristes tigres (Three Trapped Tigers) and its themes chimed with those of Cortázar: a group of friends endlessly talking, punning to hide pain, listening to music (boleros rather than jazz), exploring the limits of language and literature (for Morelli read Bustrófedon), parodying earlier literary traditions by having famous Cuban writers pen their own versions of Trotsky’s death, and sustaining a constant humor as the world collapses around the characters.’ (The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel, CUP, 2005, p. 71).

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