Dimensions
127 x 197 x 5mm
He smiles, and says, "I have never eaten real chocolate before . . . You have many poor in England I think. Have your poor tasted chocolate?"
The question stuns me momentarily. "Yes," I say eventually. "Our poor have chocolate . . . it's different in England, there the poor have no homes or maybe no beds . . . but at least everyone has chocolate."
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 reality 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.