SOURCE: “‘Vistas of Dawn in the (Tristes) Tropics': History, Fiction, Translation,” in World Literature Today, Vol. 61, No. 4, Autumn, 1987, pp. 548-53.

In the following essay, Levine, who translated View of Dawn in the Tropics into English, addresses the collection's origin and major influences, as well as its principal themes.

History Is a Story

Vista del amanecer en el trópico (1974; Eng. View of Dawn in the Tropics, 1978) was one of the original titles of the book that became Tres tristes tigres (1964; Eng. Three Trapped Tigers, (1971), a novel that was going to counterpoint Guillermo Cabrera Infante's carnevale to the satyrs and nymphs of Havana nightlife with somber documentary vignettes of history in the making—the revolution against Batista which ended in the victory of Fidel Castro. “Both a chronicle and a Utopian vision of that moment, the original novel was a view of the tropical dawn of Cuba, the dawn...