Death Is Not Always the Winner
A Novel by David Landau
From Pureplay Press

Now available in Spanish & English*

*First 100 copies of English version sold will be
signed by author, David Landau

A Message From the Founder of the Cuban Human Rights Movement:

"Esteemed David Landau: Before anything else, un abrazo. Naturally, our Committee knows, first-hand, your dedicated, detailed and rigorous understanding of Cuba’s 
realities – and we are quite ready to affirm it wherever or whenever necessary."
—Ricardo Bofill, President, The Cuban Committee for Human Rights
Read more reviews...   

About the Book

More than forty years ago, Fidel Castro established himself as a one-man government in Cuba, a nation notoriously difficult to govern. Even more notably, he humiliated the United States in battle, a unique accomplishment. Nearly half a century later, as Castro maintains his grip on power, hardly anyone knows how he did it. These pivotal, dramatic and scarcely understood events form the setting for David Landau’s new novel, Death Is Not Always the Winner.  

Epic in scope, but tightly constructed, Death Is Not Always the Winner tells an unusual story  - carefully based on history - about efforts by Cuban rebels to overthrow Castro’s regime in 1960 and 1961. These people had helped to wage the war that brought Castro to power; they turned against Castro’s government when they saw him building a tyranny. 

This inherently dramatic situation sets the stage for a series of confrontations in which the CIA and Castro’s counterintelligence agents figure prominently. Intertwined with the espionage and action is a substantial romantic drama. Politics, history, romantic feeling and sexual passion meet at the novel’s high point, an attempt on Castro’s life. The story climaxes in that failed attempt and in scenes of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. It moves on to supply what many readers have called memorable scenes of political trials and executions. A first-person account creates a vivid portrayal of a political prisoner’s existence in the Cuban gulag. Finally, the principal characters – after long separation – resolve their relationship with a mutual discovery that brings the novel to a powerful and moving close.

Throughout its 250 pages, the novel supplies an absorbing, original perspective on Cuban society and on international conflict during the Castro period. A work of the imagination, it also closely reflects the true-to-life experiences of people whom history, so far, has grievously ignored.

Reviews

“This novel has a timely subject. It's carefully based on history. Above all it's written by someone who is able to treat very anguishing human situations with sensitivity and respect.

—CARMEN ALFONSO, Wife of a Former Cuban Mayor

“David Landau knows the Cuban mind and history better than most Cubans do. And he has achieved in his novel what no other American or Cuban writer has ever accomplished: a vivid portrait of the complex political struggles that allowed Castro, by winning them, to become the most influential, most powerful and longest-lasting despot in Latin America's history.”

—BENIGNO DOU, Assistant Managing Editor, El Nuevo Herald