Hotel Cuba: A Novel

Written by Aaron Hamburger

Narrated by Marie Hoffman

“Deeply moving, compulsively readable, Hotel Cuba chronicles the early twentieth century immigrant experience with a profound understanding and crackling urgency I’ve not previously encountered. I could not put it down and I could not stop thinking about it long after I’d reached its stunning conclusion. In short: You need to read this book. Right now.”—Joanna Rakoff, bestselling author of My Salinger Year

“Thick with the humid air of a Havana summer night, rich with mesmerizing detail, Hotel Cuba will grab you and not let you go.”—Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of Take My Hand, Balm and Wench

From the award-winning author of The View from Stalin's Head, a stunning novel about two sheltered Russian Jewish sisters, desperate to get to America to make a new life, who find themselves trapped in the sultry, hedonistic world of 1920s Havana.

Fleeing the chaos of World War I and the terror of the Soviet Revolution, practical, sensible Pearl Kahn and her lovestruck, impulsive younger sibling Frieda sail for America to join their sister in New York. But discriminatory new immigration laws bar their entry, and the young women are turned back at Ellis Island. With few options, Pearl and Frieda head for Havana, Cuba, convinced they will find a way to overcome this setback.

At first, life in big-city Prohibition-era Havana is overwhelming, like nothing Pearl and Frieda have ever experienced—or could have ever imagined in the rural shtetl where they grew up. As the sisters begin to adjust, their plans for going to America together become complicated. Frieda falls for the not-so-dreamy man of her dreams while Pearl’s life opens up unexpectedly, offering her a taste of freedom and heady romance, and an opportunity to build a future on her own terms. Though to do so, she must confront her past and the shame she has long carried.

A heartbreaking, epic family story, Hotel Cuba explores the profound courage of two women displaced from their home who strive to create a new future in an enticing and dangerous world far different from anything they have ever known.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: May 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9780063221468

Aaron Hamburger

Aaron Hamburger is the author of the story collection The View from Stalin’s Head—which won the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Rome Prize and was nominated for a Violet Quill Award—and two novels, Faith for Beginners, which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, and Nirvana Is Here, winner of a Bronze Medal from the Foreword Reviews Indies Book Awards. His writing has appeared in the New York Times; Washington Post; O, The Oprah Magazine; Tablet; The Forward; and numerous other publications. He lives in Washington, DC.

Reviews for Hotel Cuba

[MLJS-piano · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

On the one hand - a wonderful angle on the historical fiction genre... the Jewish diaspora, especially of the garment workers, to America, but, via Cuba! -- as well as some peripheral and often ignored LGBTQ history. I love learning new pieces of the immigration story of our country. Also liked the narrator and her skill with the voices and accents. On the other hand ... a fairly predictable and simplistic (a little cookie cutter, all the expected check marks) telling -- it has the feel of young adult fiction, rather than full adult literature. I felt sinply, "comfortable" hearing the tale; this is not a complaint, just observation. And I always wonder why a man would write a story of a young woman's coming of age. Surprisingly, many of his insights and angles ring true. Sometimes it felt a little contrived. But in the end, I'll remember Pearl fondly as a resilient and resonant heroine.