Driving Through Cuba: Rare Encounters in the Land of Sugar Cane and Revolution

In 1987 British novelist Gebler (son of writer Edna O'Brien) flew to Cuba with his wife and daughter, rented a car and became a ``tourist of the revolution'' more interested in Cubans' daily life than in ideology or politics. His detailed, informative account is largely about oppressive heat, torrential rains, bad roads, broken-down cars, cockroaches, water-rationing and discontented citizens. The reader is introduced to a few semi-Ugly Americans, although the author gives Canadian tourists the prize for objectionability. Essentially this is a collection of gloomy sketches, given weight by chunks of Cuban history, and relieved by Gebler's sense of irony and intermittent flashes of humor. On the way home the travelers stopped off in Prague; the author's ecstatic description of that city makes his Cuba trip seem like a visit to purgatory. Photos. (Mar.)