By Gabriela Reyes on July 20, 2010

Lolas and Lalos,

Renown travel writer Pico Iyer now gives us a novel whose central character is another place:  the melancholy, ebullient, and dazzlingly inconsistent island that is Castro’s Cuba.  The title of the book comes from a line of Jose Marti’s “Two fatherlands I have, Cuba and the night.”  Iyer narrates a story that so intricately weaves the Cuban political climate, the resilience of a people and other unexpected things that happen in the night.  It begins with “I think I’ll always remember the first time I saw him…”  One of my favorite lines so far is, “the girls looked so gorgeous I figured they weren’t girls at all.  Look for the Adam’s apple, I told myself, and remember why it’s called that.”  This passage beautifully illustrates the desperation Richard encounters, and I feel like there are already so many things to talk about.

Book: Cuba and the Night by Pico Iyer
Date: August  7, 2010
Time: 7:00pm
Meeting Place: Café Con Leche
1732 North Milwaukee Avenue (at Wabansia)
Chicago, IL  60647
RSVP with Evite

We are taking the book club on the road this month, and will be meeting at Cafe Con Leche. Please RSVP as soon as possible so we can accommodate everyone!  Cafe Con Leche is BYOB, and there is a liquor store right across the street, in case you want to really get into the mood!

We want to welcome as many people as possible to join in the fun, and would like your help in selecting the next list of titles. We have comprised a list of promising literary adventures and would like your input to help condense our list of nine books to five.

• The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hernon, Chicago
• Seeing by Jose Saramago, Portugal
• The Hummingbird’s Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea, Mexico
• Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea, Mexico
• La Niña Mala by Mario Vargas Ilosa, Peru
• The Private Life of Trees by Alejandro Zambra, Chile
• The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño, Chile
• How I Became a Nun by Cesar Aira, Argentina
• Learning To Lose by David Trueba, Spain

Please vote with the poll below, and the top five most voted books will be selected for the coming months.

[poll id="4"]