Fat cigars, big cars, dirty money, vibrant music, intellectual ferment. Havana, since its creation in 1535, has long offered a unique, bewildering mix of the backward and the hip, the seedy and the sophisticated. In many respects, it shares the characteristics of other colonial or post-colonial cities of the Caribbean and Latin America. But at the same time, Havana created its own niche both as an international city and a dynamic national capital. Despite Cuba's fluctuating fortunes, Havana has always managed to thrive and develop its own unique character as an urban, social, economic, cultural and political site. Havana offers a sweeping account of the city and its cultural development, focusing especially on the last two centuries and on the role played by the city's cultural communities in the search for national identity. The author introduces us to a marginal city with roots in the sixteenth century, taking us through the periods when it was a sugar boomtown, pulled between empires, a decadent metropolis, a site of both cultural revolution and relative stagnation during the development of the Revolution to its revival in the 1990s. He looks at the often creative tensions between external influences (especially Spain, France and the United States) and indigenous cultural pressures. Areas covered include architecture, literature, music, dance, cinema and the press. Cosmopolitan playground and nationalist vanguard, Havana has developed its own style while at the same time both reflecting and directing the complicated politics of the whole of Cuba. This book offers a concise introduction to one of the most intriguing cities of the twenty-first century.

Formato	Tapa suave
Número de Páginas	256
Lenguaje	Inglés
Editorial	Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Fecha de Publicación	2005-08-01
Dimensiones	9.16" x 6.46" x 0.54" pulgadas
Letra Grande	No
Con Ilustraciones	Si
Temas	Caribeño, Caribeño, América Latina, América Latina

Kapcia, Antoni

Antoni Kapcia is Professor of Latin American History at the University of Nottingham and the author of Cuba: Island of Dreams (Berg Publishers, 2000).

Antoni Kapcia is professor of Latin American history at the University of Nottingham, where he also directs the Centre for Research on Cuba. Since 1975, he has published extensively on aspects of modern and contemporary Cuban history, focusing especially on political and cultural history and on the questions of ideology and national identity. His books include Cuba: Island of Dreams (2000), Havana: The Making of Cuban Culture (2005), Cuba in Revolution (2008) and (in conjunction with Par Kumaraswami) Literary Culture in Cuba: Revolution, Nation-Building and the Book (2012).