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Fiction 33
Guillermo Cabrera Infante
was born in Gibara, a town in
eastern Cuba, in 1929. When
he was 12, his family moved to
Havana. He briefly studied
journalism at the University of
Havana and embarked on a
career as a writer.
In 1952, during the Batista
dictatorship, Cabrera Infante
received a stiff fine and a jail
sentence for using profanity in
a short story. Thereafter, he
wrote under various pseudo-
nyms. As “Caín,” he was the
longtime film critic for the
weekly magazine
Carteles
.
Movies were one of his abiding
passions.
After Fidel Castro came to
power, Cabrera Infante served as the founding editor of
Lunes
de Revolución
, the weekly literary supplement to the official
daily newspaper of the revolution. And in 1960, he published
his first major collection of short stories,
Así en la paz como en
la guerra
(
In Peace as in War
).
But Cabrera Infante’s writing career would soon run up
against the Castro government’s censorship. In 1960, the gov-
ernment shut down
Carteles
. The following year, Cabrera
Infante became embroiled in a controversy over the regime’s
Guillermo Cabrera Infante was one of Cuba’s
most influential fiction writers.