<a>Prologue</a>

Prologue

From What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five by Stephen Kimber. Published by Fernwood Publishing, 2013. This is both a tribute and a thank you to Alejandro Trelles, the Cuban guide who introduced me to the story of the Cuban Five. I will be forever grateful. Alejandro died on August […]

What Lies (Spanish edition) among 2016’s best selling titles in Cuba

Ten titles deserved the Reader’s Award that the Cuban Book Institute convenes. Awarded this time to the volumes with the highest commercial circulation between January 2016 and 2017, the award distinguished those whose sales exceeded 70% of its circulation. They are available to the reading public in the Great Bookstore of the San Carlos de […]

Message from Fidel

In the weeks following their arrests in September 1998, Gerardo Hernandez, René González, Ramon Labañino, Fernando González and Tony Guerrero — the Cuban Five — were as alone as they would ever be. They were being held in solitary confinement in the Miami Detention Center. Five of the comrades arrested with them were in the […]

“Without haste but without pause”

My most recent article — with John Kirk — for World Financial Review on the state of U.S-Cuba relations in the Age of Obama: “Ending the embargo remains the sine qua non for improving US–Cuba relations. While only Congress can eliminate it, Obama is doing his best to eviscerate its provisions. Before he left for […]

Time for American policy makers to walk a mile in Cuban shoes

By John Kirk and Stephen Kimber On Dec. 17, 2014, President Barack Obama went on television to declare the United States was unilaterally ending America’s “outdated approach [to Cuba] that, for decades, has failed to advance our interests.” So why do so many American politicians and commentators still persist in arguing the U.S. has been […]

Canada’s Cuba connections run deep, and Cuba won’t forget

In the spring of 2013, U.S. and Cuban negotiators needed a neutral location for secret talks that would lead — 18 months later— to the stunning, Dec. 17, 2014, announcement the world’s two “closest of enemies” were re-establishing relations. The only thing they could agree on initially, however, was that those talks should take place […]

‘What Lies’ Spanish edition presented at the 25th Feria International del Libro de La Habana

Hoy en la Feria del Libro textos sobre Los Cinco 15 febrero 2016 / Fuente original: Radio Cubana Los textos “Del otro lado del mar. La verdadera historia de los cinco cubanos” y “La redención del pasado. De la lucha por la libertad a la sanación”, serán presentados hoy en la XXV Feria Internacional […]

Spanish edition of What Lies to be launched February 15 in Havana

You’re invited to the launch of the Spanish-language Cuban edition of What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five Lo que race a travis del mar: La verdadera history de los Cinco cubans Monday, February 15 at 10 a.m. Sala Nicolás Guillén, Morro Cabaña. The Cuban edition, which is published by Nuevo Milenio, features an introduction […]

‘Meticulously researched, factual without being dull, and written with sensitivity and honesty — warts and all…”

Review of What Lies Across the Water in Science & Society By Helen Yaffe (University College London), Science & Society In 2009 Stephen Kimber was in Havana researching for a love story he planed to write when, he explains, he “got sideswiped by the truth-is-stranger-but-way-more-interesting story of the Cuban Five” (1). Thanks to serendipity, Kimber […]

Volvieron! One year later

Halifax December 17, 2014 Inside the second-floor King’s College boardroom, close to a dozen of us huddled around a meeting table, wake-up coffees in hand, listening while our university’s director of finance walked us through her Powerpoint presentation of bad news we already knew, but in far more excruciating detail than any of us wanted […]