Free review copy received from the publisher!

I love it when books focus on smaller, forgotten parts of history. Alexander Graham Bell is credited with the invention of the telephone, but between 1856 and 1870, the Italian Antonio Meucci developed around 30 different telephone devices based on findings he made in 1849 - while residing in Cuba. But, living in poverty after illness and several failed business ventures, he couldn’t afford to renew the provisional patent for his device in 1874. When Bell’s patent arrived in 1876, Meucci couldn’t prove he got there first.

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Enter Karla Suárez and Havana Year Zero!

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It’s 1993 and a group of Cubans linked in various, complex ways are all on a mission to locate document that would prove Meucci invented the telephone first in Havana. Cuba is in economic crisis and the MC Julia is having a bit of a personal crisis too. She hopes that finding the document will restore a bit of prestige to Cuba and to her life too.

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At first I didn’t really feel invested in this book. But then, slowly slowly, Suárez worked some kind of magic and by page 75 I was just as entangled in the mystery and web of lies and deceit as the characters were! It also sent me down a wormhole of trying wrap my brain around chaos theory... I still don’t fully understand it, but I love a book that sends me off to learn about new (to me) ideas!

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The only thing I didn’t really like was that the MC and the other women in the book are sort of pitted against each other. It’s resolved a bit in the end, but it was a tad irksome!

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Overall though, another winner from @charcopress and beautifully translated by Christina MacSweeney!