Private House

Cubas dazzling sun casts the darkest shadows... A Private House, Anthony Hydes brilliant new novel, takes us into the lives of two very different women and to one of the most remarkable cities in the worldHavana, in the twilight of the Castro regime. Lorraine has come there to honour the dying wish of an old friend. Mathilde, a French journalist, is writing about the end of the revolution as seen through the eyes of Bailey, a Black Panther and plane hijacker, an exile from the States and from the sixties. The two women dont have much in commonor so it seems. But in a single week, they find their lives running parallel and then twisting together as the action takes them from the narrow passages of the Old City, dark with poverty and the mysteries of santeria, into the leafy streets of Vedado and the sea breezes along the Malecn. Caught up in this decaying world, the women step into history but also into themselves, making private journeysemotional, spiritual, sexualand what they discover isnt necessarily what they expect to find. A remarkable departure from Anthony Hydes previous work, A Private House creates a Havana as haunting as Graham Greenes, rich with the colour of an extraordinary place at an extraordinary time, but also filled with the mystery and passion of ordinary lives.