Salsa! Lolcats! Revolution!
About the Book
Praise for “The Cat King of Havana”
A Junior Library Guild Selection
Crosshill’s big-hearted novel shines.
Crosshill shares the best of Cuba, bringing it alive for readers with beautiful and vibrant descriptions of salsa and honest, often funny commentary. Cat King also offers a fresh portrayal of young romance, a welcome dose of reality for geeks hoping to get the girl.
The Cat King of Havana navigates through complex layers of belonging with glorious goofiness.
Salsa! LOLcats! Political prisoners! It’s impossible not to get swept up in the dizzying rush of this book. Rick Gutiérrez is the kind of narrator you can’t help but like (even when he’s being a douche), and The Cat King of Havana balances the sharply funny with the beautifully bittersweet in its explorations of identity, family, love, and the complexities of Cuba.
Crosshill deftly captures those odd and beautiful moments at the intersections of culture and race and gender and class; the mortification of being a raw beginner at something you already know you love and already doubt you’ll ever be any good at; the unexpected peace of trying as hard as you can and still not getting what you want (which maybe never mattered anyway)–I loved this layered, smart, hilarious novel.
Learn Salsa with “The Cat King of Havana”
Author Tom Crosshill recently spent a year in Havana studying dance at the Instituto Superior de Arte. While there, he shot a series of salsa videos at various locations featured in “The Cat King of Havana”.
To learn a few basic steps, watch the videos below! More will be posted soon!
The Best Cat Videos Known to Mankind
Or: Why Catotrope?
Rick Gutierrez, the protagonist of “The Cat King of Havana”, is a cat video tycoon. His site catotrope.com is a one-stop lolcat destination.
For this reason, one of the most difficult parts of writing the book was the research. Author Tom Crosshill spent hundreds of hours selflessly watching cat videos all across the internet to ground catotrope.com in the real world. Here are a few of his favorites.
Note: We didn’t create these videos; all the rights to the videos belong to their respective owners.