Banned in Cuba but celebrated throughout the Spanish-speaking world, this picaresque novel in stories chronicles the misadventures of Pedro Juan, a former Cuban journalist living from hand to mouth in the squalor of contemporary Havana, half disgusted and half fascinated by the depths to which he has sunk. Like the lives of so many of his neighbors in the crumbling, once-elegant apartment houses that line Havana's waterfront, Pedro Juan's days and nights have been reduced by the so-called special times -- the harsh recession that followed the Soviet Union's collapse -- to the struggle of surviving the daily grit through the escapist pursuit of sex. Pedro Juan scrapes by under the shadow of hunger -- all the while observing his lovers and friends, strangers on the street, and their suffering with an unsentimental, mocking, yet sympathetic eye.

Pedro Juan used to be a reporter in Havana, but as life in Cuba and his own life begin to collapse around him, he gives up the farce of a daily job, and begins to "train himself to take nothing seriously". His training involves lots of sex, drugs, rum, jazz, beat literature and street philosophy.

A Cuban artist finds his options increasing even as he remains holed up in his crumbling Havana abode, pursued by a proud prostitute who seems bent on taming him and offered an opportunity to travel to Sweden to pursue a creative life in Europe. By the author of Dirty Havana Trilogy.

Pedro Juan Gutieacute;rrez's bestselling novel, Dirty Havana Trilogy, was hugely acclaimed for its honest depiction of a Cuban capital characterized by sleaze, sex, poverty and hedonism. In The Insatiable Spider Man we see the return of its anti-hero, who is again prowling the streets of Havana. Pedro Juan's relationship with his wife, Julia, is in terminal decline. He can no longer bear kissing her on the mouth and the trappings of domestic bliss hold no charms for this most restless and predatory of men. Our narrator's interests lie elsewhere: in the infinite possibilities of a chaotic Caribbean city and many chancers, artists and prostitutes who roam the streets in search of fresh experience. Pedro Juan Gutieacute;rrez again takes the reader on a journey into the underbelly of contemporary Havana - a world of easy sex, hard drinking and humorous anecdotes, that will be all too recognizable to the Gutieacute;rrez connoisseur.

An audacious, exuberant novel that follows Cuca Martinez from childhood to motherhood in Cuba, where she fights to survive & be happy in a world on which fortune has consistently failed to smile.

A young transvestite found strangled in a Havana park. The stifling death of a beloved Cuba.

It is 1953 and Cuba is at its lush and glamorous best. However, the rise of a daring revolutionary named Fidel Castro threatens this tropical paradise. Legendary sniper Earl Swagger is called in by the CIA to take Castro out. Now available in a tall Premium Edition. Reissue.