RIP Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante has passed on.

His effervescent novel Tres Tristes Tigres, published in English as Three Trapped Tigers, captured the rum-soaked, salacious Havana of the late 1950s and became a classic of Cuban literature. As most of his writings, the novel bubbled with the witty Cuban speak of the streets and a cast of eccentric characters.

Although he wrote ”in Cuban” instead of the high-brow Spanish of many of his contemporaries, he earned high-brow praise, winning in 1997 Spain’s Cervantes prize, the most prestigious in Spanish literature.

He was also an outspoken critic of the Communist regime in Cuba.