A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous & cruel like any other
- but with certain differences. The neighbours monkey was liable to escape & run across your roof. Surfing was conducted by driving cars across the breakwater. Lizards & firecrackers made frequent contact. Carlos Eires childhood was a little different from most. His father was convinced he had been Louis XVI in a past life. At school classmates with fathers in the Batista government were attended by chauffeurs & bodyguards. At a home crammed with artifacts & paintings portraits of Jesus spoke to him in dreams & nightmares. Then in January 1959 the world changes: Batista is suddenly gone a cigar-smoking guerrilla has taken his place & Christmas is cancelled. The echo of firing squads is everywhere. & one by one the authors schoolmates begin to disappear
- spirited away to the United States. Carlos will end up there himself without his parents never to see his father again. Narrated with the urgency of a confession WAITING FOR SNOW IN HAVANA is both an ode to a paradise lost & an exorcism. More than that it captures the terrible beauty of those times in our lives when we are certain we have died
- & then are somehow miraculously reborn.