The
handsomest man in Cuba: a bicycle escapade
Lynette Chiang
www.galfromdownunder.com
Feb 2007 USA/Canada, Globe-Pequot ISBN 0762743905, 978-0762743902
2004 USA/Canada, Small Wheel Press ISBN-0-9755816-0-0
2003 Random House/Bantam Australia
ISBN-1863254161
Sample chapters: Chapter 1, A Cuban Christmas Amazon.com Search Inside the Book | HTML Chapter 8, La Casa de Lolita (PDF) Chapter 13, The 55-cent Hotel (PDF) Chapter 19, A Loiter Too Far (PDF) | HTML Reviews Short blurbs appearing in the front of the 2007 edition (PDF) From New York Times Summer Book Review, 2 June 2007 For real adventure, readers would do well to turn to THE HANDSOMEST MAN IN CUBA: An Escapade (Globe Pequot, paper, $14.95). Four years before her arrival in Cuba, Lynette Chiang chucked her computer programming job, three-bedroom house and boyfriend in Sydney and set out to travel the world, inviting readers to join her midway through. By the time she hits Cuba, she has already mastered the art of the Bike Friday, a fold-up bicycle, and learned to travel on the cheap and skinny, entering the country with a small stove, a tent, a sleeping bag and $2,000 in cash. Chiang isn't a purist - she'll get off her bike when necessary or convenient - but she's about as gutsy a bargain traveler as they come ...Read more From Library Journal, April 2007 Australian vagabond Chiang's travel memoir on Cuba works on several levels. For American adventure travelers, there is the excitement of traveling to a place your country basically forbids you to go. For solo female travelers, there are the pleasures and horrors (beware of flashers in the city of Cienfuegos) of exploring a place on your own terms. For cyclists, there is perhaps the challenge of bicycling Cuba's long and varied terrain. Although Chiang sees fantastic sites, it is really the people she meets who provide her with her fondest memories. Average Cubans share their daily rations with her, welcome her into their homes or yards (for camping) for days, and basically show her a good time. But it is not all idyllic. Besides being assaulted in Cienfuegos, Chiang falls victim to petty thefts, harassing touts, price gouging, and the general oddness of Cuba's version of tourism separation. Through it all, she keeps her good sense of humor and a positive outlook. Wonderfully literate, entertaining, and insightful; recommended for public libraries. From Bentrideronline.com writer Larry Varney, Jan 2007 If you're looking for the bicycling equivalent of Steinbeck's Travels With Charley, you've found it. All along the way she does what every good writer does: she takes us with her. I may not go to Cuba this year, or even the next, but The Handsomest Man in Cuba has left me feeling like I've already been there, and want to go back. Read more From Cycle Publishing , Robert van der Plas, Jan 2007 This is a book not just for bikies, not just for tourists, and not just for those with one of the usual axes to grind about Cuba and its regime. This is travel literature at its best. Whether you are a cyclist or not, whether you'd contemplate visiting Cuba or not, The Handsomest Man in Cuba is one of the best travel narratives you'll ever read. -- Rob van der Plas is acquisitions editor and publisher of Cycle Publishing, and himself the author of a handful of bicycle books, covering everything from touring to racing and and from commuting to bicycle technology. From the foreword to the USA edition by Joe Kurmaskie aka Metal Cowboy , July 2004: The first two wheeled travel adventure I've read in far too long that is more than just a pretty face. By turns, introspective, charming and thoughtful, The Handsomest Man In Cuba packs in what so many travel adventures discard; the emotional landscape of a country and the interior map of the person exploring it. Read more Review in the Eugene Weekly Winter 2004-5 Reading Guide : ... she works her way deep into a culture that few people in the U. S. know. Chiang's resourcefulness and buoyant spirit make her adventures fun to read. Her willingness to describe her self-doubts and bouts of loneliness make the book even more compelling. Read more - Cecelia Hagen Review in The Sun Herald (Sydney)/Sunday Age (Melbourne), August 3, 2003 In the glut of Cuban travel books, this one really stands out. Written by a Chinese-Australian solo cyclist who rides a folding bike, it is lively, well-observed and goes off the beaten track. Chiang captures the generosity of Cubans who have little or nothing, but prefer friendship to money. Although cashed up with dollars, she admits to being less generous than her hosts, making her an unusually honest narrator - by Caroline Baum, editor of Good Reading magazine www.goodreadingmagazine.com.au Review in The Sydney Morning Herald, July 14, 2003 Backpacker travel yarns, for want of a better term, vary hugely in quality, ranging from the banal to the insightful. Sydneysider, computer-science graduate and one-time advertising copywriter Lynette Chiang's adventures in Cuba and Central America are very firmly at the insightful end of the scale. They are written without pretension from the vantage point of an astute, but essentially naive, traveller. Chiang (nicknamed "La China" in Cuba) abandons the security of suburban Sydney, buys a "small wheel, folding bicycle" and heads for Havana. She lives close to ordinary Cubans and, with considerable understanding comes to see them as poor but warm, generous and friendly. Sensibly, she eschews the current post-Bryson vogue of seeing everything in humorous terms and trying to turn every adventure into a stand-up routine. The result is a song of praise for the humanity and simple decency of Cubans. Review in The Launceston Examiner, June 28, 2003 This is one of the best 'on-the-road' travel books of this generation. Chiang takes us on an expedition by bicycle through Cuba. You can almost feel the wind in your face. Here is an intensely personal tale of what it is like to eat, drink, dance and be merry among Cubans. Sex and soap opera get a cigar, with an athletic woman who is anxious to avoid the tourist traps. She tells how, despite what we Westeners would consider appalling poverty, everyone appears happy and at peace. "No matter how poor or disillusioned, wretched or enlightened, every Cuban has someone to go home to," Chiang says. "Every Cuban would be missed at a dinner table." This book is practical too, advising which bike to buy, which saddle to get and how to have serious fun in one of the few remaining communist countries. - by Martin Stevenson 
Review in
Australian Cyclist, September 2003
The only time you will put it down is when you finish it - Peter Sutherland Read full review |
2007 Globe-Pequot edition. Cover based on the original
edition designed by Lynette Chiang. Photography and inside map by Lynette Chiang using Deneba/ACDSee CANVAS for Mac
WHERE TO BUY THIS BOOK 1. 2007 USA EDITION (Globe-Pequot, with 8 pages of color photos): Support your local book store | Amazon | Bike Friday* 2. 2004 SELF PUBLISHED EDITION (Small Wheel Press, with 8 pages of color photos at end): Just a few copies left in the Bike Friday online store, now a collector's item, or call Bike Friday 1-800-777-0258. Quite possibly signed. For a signed edition, badger Lynette using her Paypal account lynchiang@yahoo.com, $15 + shipping 3. 2003 AUSTRALIAN EDITION (Random House/Bantam, no photos): Soon to be out of print. Buy from DYMOCKS and major bookstores in Australia and New Zealand Check out the Galfromdownunder's other goodies * when we've sold off the last remaining half a case of the 2004 Edition |
