Tilting at Cadillacs
Quijote de America, statue in Vedado by Sergio Martínez (1930-1988) AFTER YEARS of seeing references to Carlo Gébler's 1988 work, Driving Through Cuba, an East-West Journey (Hamish Hamilton Ltd.), I've finally found a copy. Not that anything was lost in the interval. Given the slow pace of change in Cuba, Gébler's book could have been written last week. As the title promises, this is a road trip. The best kind, too, it turns out — the kind in which the narrator pushes ahead without set itinerary or even a reliable map, as unknowing as you, the gleeful reader, of what might await beyond the next rise. Carlo Gébler You aren't the only one along for the ride. With the author in a rental Lada of dubious electrics is his pregnant wife Tyga and their young daughter India, both seemingly as willing as he is to accept whatever they encounter, from empty grocery shelves to pursuing money-traders to tire-puncturing crab ...