Guillermo Cabrera Infante is one of the most important Latin-American authors since Jorge Luis Borges and ranks along with Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Alejo Carpentier, and Manuel Puig in popularity. A man whose personal style and political views have been controversial, Cabrera Infante's literature has proven even more provocative. With a style that fits no current mold, he seems to amuse the majority of his readers but cajoles and perplexes the critics. Compared more often with writers such as Petronius, Laurence Sterne, Lewis Carroll, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce than with his Latin-American contemporaries, Cabrera Infante is nonetheless in the vanguard of new Latin-American fiction, and he exhibits many of the characteristics and concerns of today's Latin-American writers: a radical break with the traditional plot line in favor of a fragmented format; a search for authenticity in language; a...