Cabrera Infante, G

New York. 1986. February 1986. Harper & Row. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0060154322. 329 pages. hardcover. Photograph by Ted Allan, the Kobal Collection. Jacket design by Pentagram . keywords: Literature Translated Latin America Cuba Cigars. FROM THE PUBLISHER - When Columbus first came across tobacco in Cuba he was unimpressed. He was looking for gold, not smoke. How could he know that tobacco would become the multimillion-dollar business that it is today? And that the island of Cuba was destined to produce the best cigars in the world (although so-called Havanas were never actually cultivated in Havana!). HOLY SMOKE, by the author of THREE TRAPPED TIGERS and INFANTE'S INFERNO, is the outrageous and informative story of the cigar and of those who have smoked it - in all walks of life, in literature, and in film. Cabrera Infante tells the story of cigars and cigar smoking from Columbus to Castro (who used to mooch cigars off the author) with many delightful detours along the way via Sherlock Holmes, Groucho Marx, Mark Twain, Marilyn Monroe, Oscar Wilde, Orson Welles, James Thurber, George Sand, Humphrey Bogart, W C. Fields, Marlene Dietrich, Robinson Crusoe, Colette and many others. Cabrera Lnfante describes in detail the way cigars are made, the different kinds of cigars, the history of tobacco, and the manners and mores of cigar smoking. This incredible cigar chronicle is the funniest, most original tribute to the cigar that has ever been written. ‘Mr. Infante, who writes admirable English by the way, gives us the whole story of the weed, technical and cultural, and does not disdain the cigarette. The cigarette, after all, is what you smoke between smokes. About pipes he is not so sure.' - Anthony Burgess, The Observer. inventory #7550 ISBN: 0060154322.