“…in Havana Babylon the verb grows in your hands. I have read few studies about a moral scab like prostitution in this case, with such expert narrative. Congratulations on this fascinating study. It’s a shame for your country that there now is an evil from which no one has ever been able to recover”.
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Spanish writer
This is the great book about the jineteras, as they call in Cuba the women who exercise sexual commerce in a country where it is said prostitution is prohibited but where politics applies itself to turning a blind eye. It’s the fruit of an investigation of almost 10 years, in archives and yellowing, dusty documents, and among the prostitutes, pimps, corrupt police, taxi drivers, tourist agents, hidden brothel owners and drug traffickers themselves.
“There exists a dark, sordid, sinister, disgusting and dirty world in nocturnal Cuba, that follows its own laws and that appears to pray an eternal our-father to the memory of the Marquis de Sade”. the author, Amir Valle, a noted Cuban writer of the last generation, says in the introduction.
This edition includes the investigative part that, for various reasons, the author left out of the original version, and incorporates, in addition, an upate about the changes and present modus operandi of organized prostitution in Cuba.
Editorial Planeta, Columbia, United States, Argentine, 2006
327 pages
ISBN: 958-42-1406-3
Ediciones B, Spain, 2008
Zeta de Bolsillo Collection
365 pages
ISBN: 978 84 9872 052 5
Edition Köln, Alemania, 2008
340 pages
ISBN: 978-3-936791-34-1
Éditions Métailié, France, 2010
310 pages
ISBN: 9 782864 247111