[View of Dawn in the Tropics] is a history of Cuba in sketches that draw upon fact but read like fiction. The sketches run at longest three pages; the shortest is 15 words. Characters—many of them historical personages—have no names. Scenes are set in the mountains, in the city, on the highway, without further identification. They are placed in time only by their references to engravings as opposed to photographs, and by the appearance of machine-guns. The past is a mystery, Cabrera Infante contends; it comes clear not through analysis but through imagination. Thus he has cast his imagination back to the moment Cuba rose from the sea. From the very first it reminds him of bloodshed: Cuba is like "a long green wound."… The sketches in View of Dawn are almost exclusively portrayals of senseless death. Conquistadores turn a feast into a massacre because, receiving a...