Carlos Manuel Álvarez is the author of the short story collection La tarde de los sucesos definitivos and the novel Los caídos. He is co-founder of the online magazine El Estornudo and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, El Malpensante, Letras Libres, Gatopardo, La Nación, Clarín, México, GQ, Vice, and on HuffPost. In The Tribe: Portraits of Cuba (Graywolf Press), translated by Frank Wynne, Álvarez uses the “crónica” form – a Latin American writing genre that blends reportage, narrative nonfiction, and novelistic techniques – to illuminate a particularly turbulent period in Cuban history, from the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the United States and the death of Fidel Castro to the convulsions of the San Isidro Movement. The Tribe shows a society in flux. It features athletes in exile, artists, nurses, underground musicians, and household names, dissident poets, the hidden underclass at a landfill, migrants attempting to make their way across Central America, fugitives escaping the FBI, dealers in the black market, revelers, and police officers, in the noisy Havana night.
