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Mrs Gargantua
- Author
- J.S. Tennant
- Narrator
- J.S. Tennant
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Publish Date
- 16 July 2026
- Run Time
- 12 hours 44 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Winner of the 2020 Michael Jacobs Prize; shortlisted for the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer's Award
'A treasure chest full of rare and exquisitely rendered stories' JON LEE ANDERSON
'The best book you are likely to read on Cuba for ages’ SPECTATOR
A brilliantly unconventional and riveting ride through Cuba’s history, drawing on the David and Goliath dynamic of its confrontations with the US and other superpowers. It captures realities behind the fantastical, exoticised treatment Cuba often receives.
Mrs Gargantua deals with towering figures – both human and non-human – and ambitions which have left their mark on Cuba, the distorted means by which the island is often presented to the outside world. From Columbus and the conquistadores, Ptolemy to Paris Hilton, Hemingway, nuclear warheads and the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, from a nationalist sparrow ‘martyred’ during Cuba’s independence wars to Fidel Castro’s genetically modified super-cow, this non-fiction work exposes the country’s status as a social and biological testing ground and resource to be mined by larger nations.
The book’s title comes from an account of Maria Hoyt, a US heiress who raised a gorilla in Cuba (one of the first to do so beyond Africa). Later her pet was sold to a circus in the United States where she became a celebrity: the famous ‘Mrs Gargantua’. Her story is directly linked to Hoyt’s predecessor in monkey and ape husbandry, the Cuban Rosalía Abreu; reputedly the richest woman in Latin America and a legendary recluse, Abreu became the first person in history – at her mansion in Havana – to breed a chimpanzee in captivity, with unexpected and far-reaching consequences.
Like 'Mrs Gargantua', Cuba has been endlessly subject to the whims of the human circus that tries to tame her.
The award-winning Mrs Gargantua forms an entirely original, compelling inventory of the author’s twenty-year relationship with the island and its people, while also attempting to sketch Cuba’s wider importance to a political understanding of the Americas, both in tangible and imaginary terms.
Critics Review
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'No wonder this book has already received an award from the Gabriel García Márquez Foundation for Journalism. With fantastic, fairy-tale-like stories such as the one about Castro and the cow, Tennant has captured the essence of the enchanting, desolating Cuban Brigadoon’ Literary Review
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‘From start to finish, I was absorbed by this shiningly intelligent and original amalgam of history and travel… the best book you are likely to read on Cuba for ages’ Ian Thomson, Spectator
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‘A cool yet fluent style of travel writing closer to that of sceptical Norman Lewis than that of dew-eyed Jan Morris. He knows, above all, that raw facts don’t provide simple truth in Cuba, and mysteries loom large… Obama’s move towards détente has been reversed by Trump, who now claims to have the island in his crosshairs. Should Trump wish to understand what he’d be taking on … he could do no better than read Tennant’s richly intriguing and imaginative book’
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Rupert Christiansen, Daily Telegraph
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‘A treasure chest full of rare and exquisitely rendered stories about the remarkable characters whose lives and actions became interwoven with Cuba’s history. As our guide, Tennant is an amiable, erudite writer who shares sides to Cuba few of us have seen before, underpinned by his love for that most extraordinary of Caribbean islands. ¡Viva Cuba!' Jon Lee Anderson
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‘An absolutely thrilling, erudite journey through the Cuban landscape, studded with extraordinary scenes and some unforgettable cameos from members of the ape kingdom’ Chloe Aridjis
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'Mrs Gargantua is one of the most original, most insightful books about the wonderfully complex island of Cuba. I could not put it down.'
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Alberto Manguel
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‘JS Tennant accomplishes a rare feat in Mrs Gargantua: he lifts the veil that has long shrouded the idea of Cuba, preserving its allure even as he subjects it to lucid scrutiny. His Cuba emerges not only as myth or mirage, but as a political bestiary, at once real, marvellous, and profoundly human’
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Carlos Fonseca
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Details
- Author
- J.S. Tennant
- Narrator
- J.S. Tennant
- Duration
- 12 hours 44 minutes
- Release Date
- 16 July 2026
- ISBN
- 9780008447779
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Genre
- General and world history, Historical geography
Synopsis
Winner of the 2020 Michael Jacobs Prize; shortlisted for the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer's Award 'A treasure chest full of rare and exquisitely rendered stories' JON LEE ANDERSON 'The best book you are likely to read on Cuba for ages’ SPECTATOR A brilliantly unconventional and riveting ride through Cuba’s history, drawing on the David and Goliath dynamic of its confrontations with the US and other superpowers. It captures realities behind the fantastical, exoticised treatment Cuba often receives. Mrs Gargantua deals with towering figures – both human and non-human – and ambitions which have left their mark on Cuba, the distorted means by which the island is often presented to the outside world. From Columbus and the conquistadores, Ptolemy to Paris Hilton, Hemingway, nuclear warheads and the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, from a nationalist sparrow ‘martyred’ during Cuba’s independence wars to Fidel Castro’s genetically modified super-cow, this non-fiction work exposes the country’s status as a social and biological testing ground and resource to be mined by larger nations. The book’s title comes from an account of Maria Hoyt, a US heiress who raised a gorilla in Cuba (one of the first to do so beyond Africa). Later her pet was sold to a circus in the United States where she became a celebrity: the famous ‘Mrs Gargantua’. Her story is directly linked to Hoyt’s predecessor in monkey and ape husbandry, the Cuban Rosalía Abreu; reputedly the richest woman in Latin America and a legendary recluse, Abreu became the first person in history – at her mansion in Havana – to breed a chimpanzee in captivity, with unexpected and far-reaching consequences. Like 'Mrs Gargantua', Cuba has been endlessly subject to the whims of the human circus that tries to tame her. The award-winning Mrs Gargantua forms an entirely original, compelling inventory of the author’s twenty-year relationship with the island and its people, while also attempting to sketch Cuba’s wider importance to a political understanding of the Americas, both in tangible and imaginary terms.
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