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Walking to Guantanamo | 
| Author: Richard Fleming
Creators: Peter Pappas, Viktor Koen
Publisher: Commons
Buy New: $27.00
New (2) from $27.00
Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 293412
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Pages: 351
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0981457916
Dewey Decimal Number: 917
EAN: 9780981457918
ASIN: 0981457916
Publication Date: October 1, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
“I admit that it was a strange idea,” Richard Fleming writes in the opening chapter of his engaging debut as a writer. Despite having a wonderful girlfriend, a downtown Manhattan apartment, and a thriving career, he is afraid that his life is spiraling into “nightmarish mediocrity.” After obsessing over the notion for years, he finally decides that crossing the island of Cuba on foot might somehow rescue him from the fate he fears. Walking to Guantanamo is the chronicle of that journey.
And a thoroughly self-deprecating and wry chronicle it is. Rarely has a book about Cuba been so shorn of pretension, ideological blinders, or misplaced romanticism-and hardly ever has it been so genuinely funny. Fleming’s vision of the Pearl of the Antilles is, in the phrase of Madison Smartt Bell, truly “ground-level.” Uninterested in?and certainly unfazed by?either the hysterical attitude of the US government or the smug pose of the Cuban one, Richard Fleming sets out across Cuba literally one step at a time.
In doing so, he reveals a popular culture, particularly in music and spiritual life, of deep complexity. A discerning observer of daily life who rejects the cliches of Cuba’s enemies and friends alike, Richard Fleming ranges over the Cuban countryside with a rare ability to distinguish reality from facade and slogan from fact?and to do it all in often hilarious if singularly modest style.
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| Customer Reviews:
Travel literature in the spirit of Theroux and Kapuscinski October 3, 2008
... (Brooklyn NY)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is one of those rare books whose author can rightfully claim Chuck D's legendary put-down: "I've been places you'll never be". The title says it all: IN "Walking to Guantanamo" Richard Fleming tells the story of his extraordinary trip crossing Cuba on foot, and also a bit by bike and other local means of transportation. The reviewer in the Library Journal says it best: "He is brutally honest, even when it shows him in an unflattering light. This is perhaps the most accurate and readable work on Cuba this reviewer has seen." I can only agree.
A great and timely book November 8, 2008
Z. Bendor (Jerusalem and New York)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is not only an important and timely book when America needs to renew the debate about Cuba. It is also a triumph of travel writing in a complicated age that lost its innocence. Fleming really brings hope to a genre that is almost extinct in this regard. Great read, smart traveling, clever writing.
Funny, insightful, original December 5, 2008
Robert E. Long III (Mount Kisco, NY USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A wonderful book. One part gritty travelogue/one part personal odyssey, Walking to Guantanamo describes the author's solo trek across Cuba (on foot, no less). He brings the reader face to face with the people, culture and anachronisms of Cuba, through a series of fascinating, heartwarming and absurd encounters that can only occur when traveling in a truly strange place with a flexible itinerary. Fleming is a gifted writer and his knack for fresh perspective, humorous observation and honest, unguarded introspection make the pages fly by. For anyone even slightly curious about the real Cuba; the people, their customs, religion, perspective on the US, this is a must read.
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