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Persona Non Grata

A Memoir of Disenchantment with the Cuban Revolution

Jorge Edwards
April 2004     ISBN: 1560256079



Jorge Edwards stay in Cuba culminated in the arrest of his friend Heberto Padilla--a well-known writer by the regime--on the grounds that he gave Edwards a "negative view of the revolution." In a menacing midnight political debate with Edwards immediately after Padilla's arrest, Castro argued that in this phase of the revolution, bourgeois writers would no longer have "anything to do in Cuba." Castro accused Edwards of "conduct hostile to the revolution" and declared him "persona non grata."

What readers are saying

"One of the truly vibrant classics of modern American literature."
--Octavio Paz

"Jorge Edwards is a wonderful writer and this is a brilliant book, sensitive and vivid."
--Larry McMurty

"I've seldom enjoyed a book more."
--Graham Greene

"Memorable."
--Arthur Miller

"A splendidly written, extraordinary book."
--G. Cabrera Infante

About the Authors

Jorge Edwards is a winner of the Cervantes prize, the equivalent in the Spanish language of the Nobel Prize for literature. Persona Non Gratis was the first by a left wing Latin American intellectual to openly criticize the Cuban regime.

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