Dancing to 'Almendra'

Havana, 1957: On the same day that the Mafia capo Umberto Anastasia is assassinated in a barber's chair in New York, a hippopotamus escapes from Havana Zoo. Joaquin Porrata is the young Cuban journalist assigned to cover the latter story but, told by a secretive zookeeper that he "knows too much", he soon discovers that the two events are not as unconnected as they might initially seem.

In exchange for a promise to introduce the keeper to his idol, the film star George Raft, now the host of the Capri Casino, Joaquin obtains information that ensnares him in an ever-deepening plot of murder, mobsters and - finally - love, as he meets Yolanda, a beautiful ex-circus performer, now working for the famed cabaret San Souci. Dancing to 'Almendra' is a triumph of story-telling from one of Latin America's most impassioned and intoxicating voices.