Three Trapped Tigers (Latin American Literature Series) [Paperback]

Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Author), Donald Gardner (Translator), Suzanne Jill Levine (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Latin American Literature Series | Publication Date: September 2004

WILL BE MADE INTO A FILM DIRECTED BY ANDY GARCIA AND STARRING DUSTIN HOFFMAN Cabrera Infante has written the screenplay for the film himself. Filled with puns, wordplay, lists upon lists, and Sternean typography - such as the section entitled "Some Revelations", which consists of several blank pages - this novel is a more modern, sexier, funnier, Cuban Ulysses. Centring on the recollections of a man separated from both is country and his youth, Cabrera Infante creates an enchanting vision of life and the many colourful characters found in steamy Havana's pre-Castro cabaret society.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This duo from 1971 and 1984, respectively, are vastly different. Inferno is an autobiographical novel that serves up a protagonist who fancies himself a true Latin lover. TTT, on the other hand, takes a more serious look at life in the cabaret society of pre-Castro Havana. Both, however, feature the author's signature wordplay.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"It now seems utterly extraordinary that anyone can write brilliant prose in more than one language; we marvel at a Nabokov, a Beckett, a Cabrera Infante." - Susan Sontag; "With Three Trapped Tigers Cabrera Infante enters the front rank of Latin American novelists. The book belongs with Cortazar's Hopscotch, Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Donoso's The Obscure Bird of Night." - New York Review of Books"

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Product Details

• Paperback: 487 pages
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press (September 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564783790
• ISBN-13: 978-1564783790
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #228,219 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Language as Mind-Boggler, July 13, 2000

By 

Rachel Chiguluri - See all my reviews

This review is from: Three Trapped Tigers (Hardcover)

"Three Trapped Tigers" is a mind-boggler, and the expected outcome is to be able to know pre-revolutionary Havana as Cabrera Infante knew it himself. Whether this is even a possibility is something the reader must discover. Clues to the puzzle are divulged along the way, but mostly in the last section of the work, so that the reader gradually learns who the characters are, their relationships to one another, and how (and why?) they are experiencing pre-revolutionary Havana night life. The language games - including distortions, mutations, creations - add a unique element of humor. It is this humor that covers and pushes away the subtle insinuations of a tragic reality - a country on the verge of falling apart. In a work that contains such an energetic use of language, perhaps the "truth" is to be found in the silences.

The English version of "Tres tristes tigres" is where Cabrera Infante is most at liberty to describe that reality he wishes to convey in his work. He is no longer hindered by censorship so that he is free to use the language and descriptions he desires, making the English version closer to his original intent.

"Three Trapped Tigers" offers a dizzying experience of nocturnal Havana, of language, and of intimacy.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review: A feast for a reader - a nightmare for a translator, July 31, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Three Trapped Tigers (Paperback)

An inventive and animated account of night life in Havana before Castro`s regime, narrated by four friends who are trying to build their careers and end a day "not with a whimper but a bang".
Using puns, tongue twisters, palindromes and wisecracks, they retell their own adventures and comment on their friends`, and make jokes by constantly twisting out the meaning of each word or phrase they say. They engage in parodying episodes and quotations from world literature (English & American influences include Shakespeare, Sterne, Poe, Melville, Carrol, Hemingway, Faulkner, Eliot, Joyce, and many others) and scenes from popular films (the novel itself is an attempt to reconstruct a film "P.M.", by Cabrera`s brother, destroyed by Cuban censorship). They turn all these upside down, creating a hilariously funny novel whose language is always on the move and where every word has at least a double meaning.
Underlying their humour, however, is a bitter feeling of emptiness and deprivation, inability to understand others and be understood. Faced with a paradox that you cannot talk about serious things in a serious way without taking a risk of being funny, you come to realize that humor is our only weapon on "...an island of double or tripple entendres told by a drunk idiot signifying everything."

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cabrera Infante was a wonderful surprise for me 15 years ago, March 21, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Three Trapped Tigers (Hardcover)

I discovered Cabrera Infante's Tres Tristes Tigres (in Spanish) about 15 years ago and was so blown away that I searched for a copy in English so I could share it with my non Spanish speaking friends. I read the English version as well so I would know what I was recommending since I did not know how well it would translate, and found another book, equally funny--I believe he and a graduate assistant did the translation. Infante has an incredible way with language. It is certainly true that he should be read aloud. He painted an intriguing picture of a Havana which was probably almost as much a dream to him by that time as it was to me. I am buying this book today to give to a friend who introduced me to Felipe Alfau's Locos. I hope he will enjoy it as much as I have. Tres Tristes Tigres remains one of my favorite books.