Three Trapped Tigers

Infante has written a masterpiece. This book covers ( and plays on ) the styles of so many popular writers that it boggles the mind. On top of that the TRANSLATED version plays with the english language in a way that would make James Joyce proud,and maybe a wee bit jealous (and in all possibility giving the translator a nervous break down). Easily one of the best books I have ever read.

"Three Trapped Tigers" is a mind-boggler, and the expected outcome is to be able to know pre-revolutionary Havana as Cabrera Infante knew it himself. Whether this is even a possibility is something the reader must discover. Clues to the puzzle are divulged along the way, but mostly in the last section of the work, so that the reader gradually learns who the characters are, their relationships to one another, and how (and why?) they are experiencing pre-revolutionary Havana night life. The language games - including distortions, mutations, creations - add a unique element of humor. It is this humor that covers and pushes away the subtle insinuations of a tragic reality - a country on the verge of falling apart. In a work that contains such an energetic use of language, perhaps the "truth" is to be found in the silences.The English version of "Tres tristes tigres" is where Cabrera Infante is most at liberty to describe that reality he wishes to convey in his work. He is no longer hindered by censorship so that he is free to use the language and descriptions he desires, making the English version closer to his original intent."Three Trapped Tigers" offers a dizzying experience of nocturnal Havana, of language, and of intimacy.

"Tres tristes tigres," a Spanish tongue-twister, is the title of Cabrera-Infante's anti-novel, and as this book's title suggests, what lies between the book's covers is nothing short of a never-ending mental-linguistic twister of epic proportions. The book grabs the reader on page one and takes him on a linguistic roller-coaster, a mental labyrinth, and a chaos of events at once discrete but united, as music might be both cacophonous and melodious. And all of this with Havana's nightlife as the backdrop. Don't look for a plot: there is none. But what there is is a rendering of words and language in a format never before seen, nor seen since. Cabrera-Infante's work will confuse; entertain; at times it may even bore you, but in its entirety you can see the man's genius. Once you put the book down you will realize that language--what distinguishes us from animals--is nothing more than ink on paper; sounds from mouths; misinterpretations, reinterpretations, random, chaotic inventions that we--just like he--can use for our own purposes. In the end, maybe we can't trust our ears. Or in this case, our eyes.

An inventive and animated account of night life in Havana before Castro`s regime, narrated by four friends who are trying to build their careers and end a day "not with a whimper but a bang". Using puns, tongue twisters, palindromes and wisecracks, they retell their own adventures and comment on their friends`, and make jokes by constantly twisting out the meaning of each word or phrase they say. They engage in parodying episodes and quotations from world literature (English & American influences include Shakespeare, Sterne, Poe, Melville, Carrol, Hemingway, Faulkner, Eliot, Joyce, and many others) and scenes from popular films (the novel itself is an attempt to reconstruct a film "P.M.", by Cabrera`s brother, destroyed by Cuban censorship). They turn all these upside down, creating a hilariously funny novel whose language is always on the move and where every word has at least a double meaning. Underlying their humour, however, is a bitter feeling of emptiness and deprivation, inability to understand others and be understood. Faced with a paradox that you cannot talk about serious things in a serious way without taking a risk of being funny, you come to realize that humor is our only weapon on "...an island of double or tripple entendres told by a drunk idiot signifying everything."