Book 92: Cuba (Spanish) – Tres Tristes Tigres = Three Trapped Tigers (Guillermo CABRERA INFANTE)

“What’s more, my word it was so weird. Boy, I swear I didn’t get a word of it.”

 

[my translation]

 

Cuba is where I would have been travelling this month, but I had to cancel due to COVID-19. (The second time this has happened when my book and trip were scheduled in the same month – see Madagascar). My best wishes to everyone there!

The title of this book (in Spanish: ‘Three Sad Tigers’) comes from a Cuban tongue twister and the whole novel is a word-play, I suppose that was its only point.
This cinematic novel was not an easy read, although I felt a bit better when my Salvadorian friend (who lived in Cuba for a while) told me that he hadn’t gotten much out of it at the first reading, either. It is written in a disjointed, often stream-of-consciousness style and is full of Cuban slang. It is a series of (as far as I could see) mostly unrelated episodes, in different styles (including descriptions of the death of Trotsky as re-told by several famous Cuban writers apparently in their own styles – I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t heard of any of them, apart from José Martí and Alejo Carpentier). The one section I found enjoyable (and funny!) was in the middle – the incident of an apparently stolen walking stick as told separately by each of a US tourist couple who contradict each other on almost every point.
Among the many things I didn’t understand were why the character Bustrófedon writes strangely (e.g. mirror writing) but doesn’t write in real boustrophedon (left to right and right to left on alternate lines),
I feel as if I owe you an apology – perhaps I was too stupid to understand what it was on about, or need to read it a few more times, but on first reading I found it self-indulgent, (overly) ingenious, and show-offy. Nobody talks like that, in non-stop puns, no one is so remorselessly clever (and tiresome). Basically – I’m sorry to say – I found it annoying. Partly with myself – I feel I need to put more effort in to discover its virtue.
Some much more enjoyable Cuban reads (for me at least) were Cuba and the Night (Pico IYER) and Dreaming in Cuban (Cristina García).

 

CABRARA INFANTE, Guillermo (1929 – 2005), Tres tristes tigres, Barcelona, Planeta, 2016, ISBN 978-84-322-1780-7 (originally published 1967)

English translation:

CABRARA INFANTE, Guillermo, Three Trapped Tigers, translated by Donald Gardner & Suzanne Jill Levine, London, Pan, 1980, ISBN 9781536669657