New English-language bookstore a 1st in Havana

 

 

          

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PETER ORSI August 10, 2013   - Yahoo News                                                  

 

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba's first English-language bookstore offers a selection that would just about stock the lobby of an average Vermont bed and breakfast. Next to what's available in English elsewhere in Havana, it might as well be the Library of Congress.
The brainchild of a longtime U.S. expat, Cuba Libro launched Friday as a bookshop, cafe and literary salon that offers islanders and tourists alike a unique space to buy or borrow tomes in the language of Shakespeare. Cuba Libro also gives customers an occasional glimpse of opinions hard to find elsewhere on the island.

"I know how hard it is to get English-language sources here," said New York City native Conner Gorry, 43, a journalist living in Cuba since 2002. "So I started cooking this idea."
Cuba Libro is a play on "libro," the Spanish word for "book," and "Cuba libre," the rum-cola cocktail that, legend has it, was invented in 1900 to celebrate the island's independence from Spain.
The concept was hatched two years ago when a friend told Gorry that she had a sack of about 35 books she didn't know what do with. More donations swelled the collection to the 300 or so volumes on sale at opening day.

Locally produced English-language fare in government stores includes the occasional translated Cuban novel, two weekly newspapers full of the bland official-speak of state media and a smattering of tourist magazines. Beyond that, it's mostly works like the translated writings of Fidel Castro and Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and pro-government literature denouncing the United States.
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