Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy

Winner, National Book Awards 2003 for Nonfiction

Waiting for Snow in Havana, by Carlos Eire book cover, 2003
ISBN 9780743246415
Free Press / Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Carlos Eire, author photo 2003
Carlos Eire

Born in Havana, Carlos Eire fled to the United States at the age of 11. He is currently the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University, where he has been a faculty member since 1996. More about this author >

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Noted religion scholar Carlos Eire’s idyllic and privileged childhood in Havana came to an end in the wake of Castro’s revolution. In this memoir, he reveals an exotic, magical Cuba and an eccentric family: his father – a municipal judge and art collector – believed that in a past life he had been King Louis XVI. In 1962, Carlos Eire’s world changed forever when he and his brother were among the 14,000 children airlifted off the island, their parents left behind. In chronicling his life before and after his arrival in America, Mr. Eire’s personal story is also a meditation on loss and suffering, redemption and rebirth.

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