~ finding the right voice ~
"In 1970 Jorge Edwards was sent by socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende as his country's first envoy to break the diplomatic blockade that had sealed Cuba for over a decade. His arrival coincided with the turning point of the Revolution, when Castro began to repress the very intellectuals he once courted. " "In Kafkaesque detail, Edwards records the four months he spent in Havana trying to open a Chilean embassy and his disenchantment with the revolution. His stay culminated in the arrest of his friend Heberto Padilla - the first imprisonment of a well-known writer by the regime - for giving Edwards a "negative view of the revolution. " In a menacing midnight political debate with Edwards immediately after Padilla's arrest, Castro argued that in this phase of the revolution, bourgeois writers would no longer have "anything to do in Cuba. " Castro accused Edwards of "conduct hostile to the revolution" and declared him "persona non grata. ""--BOOK JACKET.