Three Trapped Tigers

A pun-drunk, nocturnal portrait of Havana in 1958, the last months before the revolution, following a handful of night owls, a photographer, a writer, an actor, a bongo player, through the cabarets and bars until dawn. Cabrera Infante maps the real nightlife: the open-air Tropicana cabaret, the neon strip of La Rampa in Vedado, the seawall of the Malecón where the friends drive and talk, and the older boulevard of the Prado. Over it all towers the doomed, magnificent singer La Estrella.

Códac

The Tropicana cabaret

Prologue

Under the great trees of the Tropicana, the MC's showman patter, half English, half Spanish, launches the whole book on its wave of wordplay and night. The cabaret is the glittering surface of 1958 Havana, tourist dollars and mulatta showgirls, the doomed good time the revolution is about to end.

Prologue

explicit The book opens with the bilingual master of ceremonies at the Tropicana, the real open-air cabaret in the Marianao district of Havana, still famous for its shows under the stars.

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