The past decade has been a particularly turbulent period in Cuban history, from the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with the U.S., to the death of Fidel Castro, to the protests of the anti-censorship San Isidro Movement. A resident of Havana, Carlos Manuel ?lvarez employs the crónica form—a genre unique to Latin American writing that blends reportage, narrative non-fiction, and novelistic forms—to illuminate how this era affects a wide variety of everyday people in Cuba.