Dancing to 'Almendra'

This story is set in Havana 1957. On the same day that the Mafia capo Umberto Anastasia is assassinated in a barber's chair in New York, a hippopotamus escapes from Havana Zoo. Joaquin Porrata is the young Cuban journalist assigned to cover the latter story but, told by a secretive zookeeper that he 'knows too much', he soon discovers that the two events are not as unconnected as they might initially seem. In exchange for a promise to introduce the keeper to his idol, the film star George Raft, now the host of the Capri Casino, Joaquin obtains information that ensnares him in an ever-deepening plot of murder, mobsters and - finally - love, as he meets Yolanda, a beautiful ex-circus performer, now working for the famed caberet San Souci. An ardent and thrilling tale of innocence lost, of Havana's secret one-time world of violence, fantastic characters and extravagant crimes, Dancing to Almendra is a triumph of story-telling from one of Latin America's most impassioned and intoxicating voices. Praise for Mayra Montero's previous novels: 'A literary tour de force ...A tale of unforgettable beauty' - Los Angeles Times on The Messenger.'A dazzling, original fugue on love and extinction' - New Yorker on The Palm of Darkness.