The Modern Novel

Biography

Guillermo Cabrera Infante was born in Gibara in 1929. His father was a journalist. Both his parents were staunch communists and were arrested, along with the seven-year old Guillermo, and they spent a few months in prison. He started to study medicine but switched to studying journalism. He found his vocation, however, in writing and the cinema, and started writing stories – the first published when the was eighteen – and writing film criticism. After the Cuban Revolution, he was appointed director of National Council for Culture. When the magazine he was publishing reviewed short film that had been banned by the Castro government, the magazine was banned. Cabrera Infante went to Belgium as the cultural attaché. He returned when his mother died but was arrested and left Cuba, never to return. After living in Spain, he moved to London where he stayed for the rest of his life. It was there that he wrote his best-known work, Tres tristes tigres (Three Trapped Tigers), one of the classics of the Latin American boom. In 1970 he went to Hollywood where he worked as a scriptwriter with moderate success. He also translated Joyce‘s Dubliners into Spanish. He died in 2005.

Other Links

Guillermo Cabrera Infante
A Scattered Homage to Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1929-2005)
Obituary
Guillermo Cabrera Infante (in Spanish)
Guillermo Cabrera Infante (in Spanish)
Obituary (in Spanish)
La Visita (story by Cabrera Infante – in Spanish)
Interview (in Spanish)
Interview (in Spanish)