This novel, by one of Cuba's leading novelists, originally published as Inconsolable Memories was a highly successful film - it is the diary of a cultured businessman in Havana at the time of the Cuban Crisis. A man abandoned by his wife and family, yet refusing to leave his homeland; regretting the departure of his friends, yet despising their bourgeois mediocrity; acknowledging the urgency for social reform, yet unable to reject entirely his former middle-class existence Above all, a man too immature to come to terms with himself or the current political events Alone and redundant, nagged by memories, overwhelmed by inner loneliness and mental turmoil, he can only recover the will to survive in the stark terror of nuclear destruction