William Palmer
Music & Rum
Anacaona: The Amazing Adventures of Cuba’s First All-Girl Dance Band
By Alicia Castro, with Ingrid Kummels (Translated by Steven Murray)
Atlantic Books 394pp £19.99 order from our bookshop
Before reading this book I knew of only two other all-women bands. One was The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, a swinging big band in America during the Second World War; the other was the immortal, if fictional, Sweet Sue’s Syncopators in the film Some Like It Hot. The Cuban band Anacaona is a worthy addition to this short and exclusive list, more remarkable in that it was made up of eleven sisters.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Only the Summer double issue (July/August) of @Lit_Review Lots of great summer reading.
'Like many a subsequent empire, Rome had a highly ambivalent relationship with the outsiders it needed to fuel its commerce, stock its slave markets and man its armies.'
@PParkerAuthor on the rise and fall of Alaric the Goth.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-barbarian-at-the-gate @douglasboin
'Of all modern English poets, Larkin is perhaps the one with whom most readers feel some imaginative affinity, a sense of having lived in the same world, with the same streets, the same unvoiced longings and anxieties.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/hull-revisited