In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd by Ana Menendez is a 229-page hardcover published by Grove Press, New York, stated first edition of 2001. The dust jacket and book are in very good condition, with little to no evidence of use.

Book Summary

By Cuban-American Pushcart Prize winner Ana Menendez, In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd is a tour-de-force collection of linked tales set in Miami and Havana.  Menendez is a lush, generous storyteller who effortlessly summons up grand, novelistic themes in her hypnotic debut:  the hopes and disappointments of post-revolutionary Castro Cuba, the cultural ties that bind family, the contrast between people's dreams and reality.  Seldom has an author captured so palpably the sting and regret of lives caught in the crosswinds of history.

Menendez's prize-winning title story was originally published in Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope:  All Story magazine and was selected by Tobias Wolff to open Best New American Voices 2000.  A masterpiece of humor and heartbreak, "In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd" introduces four aging Latinos who gather regularly to play dominoes in a Miami sidewalk park.  Day after day they meet to tell jokes about fellow countrymen who have immigrated for the American dream, but slowly it becomes clear that beneath the litany of ostensibly humorous anecdotes lie devastating truths, thinly veiled.  From this opening story and its characters unfolds a series of family snapshots that illuminate the landscape of an exiled community rich in heritage, memory, and longing for the past.

ISBN:  0-8021-1688-4