Intrigued by the many disparate views of Cuba, Zoe Bran visits
the country of contradictions and, interweaving history and current
events, personal and wider viewpoints, she paints a vivid and
compelling picture of contemporary Cuba. She finds a land that has
little in common with the tourist image of tropical paradise,
encountering a different country whose people reveal an
individuality and tenacity at once astonishing and humbling.
Zoe Bran has always been fascinated by the gap between the ideals
of the world's socialist countries and the arduous hand-to-mouth
struggles of the people who live in them. Castro's Cuba is one of
the last such places on earth. Seeking to understand the realities
of Cuba today, Zoe travels the length of this beautiful island.
Beneath the surface of music and dancing, cockfights and animal
sacrifice, she finds a land of complex ambiguities: a fertile land
where many hunger; an educated country with scant knowledge of the
outside world, a nation exhausted by socialism but proud of its
independence and history of revolutionary struggle. From Havana to
the pastoral hinterland, Zoe talks with writers and artists, with
expatriates, with committed revolutionaries and those desperate to
escape abroad. Enduring Cuba presents a kaleidoscope of Cuba and
its people, whose tenacity and endurance is at once astonishing and
humbling.