Havana is a novel by the author Stephen Hunter. The third novel in the Earl Swagger series, it was released by Simon & Schuster in 2003. The story is set in Cuba during the emergence of Fidel Castro.
Earl Swagger is recruited as a personal bodyguard for an Arkansas politician who is visiting Havana, Cuba. Swagger is met by Frenchy Short who is now a CIA intelligence officer in Cuba and is coerced into a black bag operation to assassinate Castro. Along comes an unnamed former inmate from the Gulag to help the young Castro with wisdom and encouragement for the Communist interests.
After the historical attack on the military barracks in the failed attempt by Castro to take over the country, Swagger is put on the trail. He tracks and finds his target only to abandon the mission due to the shady nature of his former subordinate. Left to fend for himself in a country that no longer tolerates Americans, Swagger must evade and survive to return home to his wife June and son Bob Lee.
Swagger is given a safe haven by a Havana prostitute whose life he saved. The Gulag inmate appears again to offer him transportation back to Florida, but when Swagger realizes that the prostitute's life is in danger he must return to Havana for a final showdown.
While Swagger has been away, Bob Lee has been at home spending days at a time refining his marksmanship ability, thinking his father's absence is due to him unable to shoot a deer at the opening of the story. Bob Lee meets his father walking along the road on his way back home from his daily target practice, and is eager to tell him all about his newfound ability to shoot.
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 2008. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 until 2011. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state; industry and business were nationalized, and state socialist reforms were implemented throughout society.
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected president of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and as its U.S.-backed military dictator from 1952 to 1959, when he was overthrown by the Cuban Revolution.
Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz is a retired Cuban politician and general who served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, the most senior position in the one-party communist state, from 2011 to 2021, succeeding his brother Fidel Castro.
Frank Anthony Sturgis, born Frank Angelo Fiorini, was one of the five Watergate burglars whose capture led to the end of the presidency of Richard Nixon. He served in several branches of the United States military and in the Cuban Revolution of 1958, and worked as an undercover operative for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Stephen Hunter is an American novelist, essayist, and film critic.
I Am Cuba is a 1964 anthology drama film directed by Mikhail Kalatozov at Mosfilm. An international co-production between the Soviet Union and Cuba, it was not received well by either the Russian or Cuban public and was almost completely forgotten until it was re-discovered by filmmakers in the United States thirty years later. The acrobatic tracking shots and idiosyncratic mise en scene prompted Hollywood directors like Martin Scorsese to begin a campaign to restore the film in the early 1990s.
Dirty White Boys is a 1994 crime thriller novel by American author Stephen Hunter. It covers the escape of convict Lamar Pye and two accomplices from a penitentiary in Oklahoma, and highway patrol officer Bud Pewtie's attempts to track them down.
Finca Vigía is a house in San Francisco de Paula Ward in Havana, Cuba which was once the residence of Ernest Hemingway. Like Hemingway's Key West home, it is now a museum. The building was constructed in 1886.
Point of Impact is a 1993 thriller novel by Stephen Hunter.
Pale Horse Coming (ISBN 0-684-86361-8) is a novel by Stephen Hunter published in 2001. It is his second book in the series featuring the character of Earl Swagger.
William Alexander Morgan was a United States citizen who fought in the Cuban Revolution, leading a band of rebels that drove the Cuban army from key positions in the central mountains as part of Second National Front of Escambray, thereby helping to pave the way for Fidel Castro's forces to secure victory. Morgan was one of about two dozen U.S. citizens to fight in the revolution and one of only three foreign nationals to hold the rank of comandante in the rebel forces. In the years after the revolution, Morgan became disenchanted with Castro's turn to communism and he became one of the leaders of the CIA-supplied Escambray rebellion. In 1961, he was arrested by the Cuban government and, after a military trial, executed by firing squad in the presence of Fidel and Raul Castro.
Leonardo de la Caridad Padura Fuentes is a Cuban novelist and journalist. As of 2007, he is one of Cuba's best-known writers internationally. In his native Spanish, as well as in English and some other languages, he is often referred to by the shorter form of his name, Leonardo Padura. He has written screenplays, two books of short stories, and a series of detective novels translated into 10 languages. In 2012, Padura was awarded the National Prize for Literature, Cuba's national literary award and the most important award of its kind. In 2015, he was awarded the Premio Principe de Asturias de las Letras of Spain, one of the most important literary prizes in the Spanish-speaking world and usually considered as the Iberoamerican Nobel Prize.
Pedro Luis Boitel was a Cuban poet and dissident who opposed the governments of both Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro. In 1961, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Bob Lee "the Nailer" Swagger is a fictional character created by Stephen Hunter. He is the protagonist of a series of 12 novels that relate his life during and after the Vietnam War—starting with Point of Impact (1993) up to the most recent Targeted (2022). Swagger is also the protagonist of both the 2007 film and the 2016 TV series Shooter, each based on Point of Impact. Creator Stephen Hunter has stated that Swagger is loosely based on USMC Scout Sniper Carlos Hathcock.
Black Light is a 1996 thriller novel by Stephen Hunter. It is the second novel in the Bob Lee Swagger series and the sequel to Point of Impact.
Shooter is a 2007 American action thriller film directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by Jonathan Lemkin, based on the 1993 novel Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter. The film follows Force Recon Marine Scout Sniper veteran Bob Lee Swagger, who is framed for murder by a mercenary unit operating for a private military firm. The film also stars Michael Peña, Danny Glover, Kate Mara, Levon Helm, and Ned Beatty. It was produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura through Di Bonaventura Pictures, and released by Paramount Pictures in the United States on March 23, 2007. It grossed $95.7 million on a $61 million budget.
The 47th Samurai is a 2007 thriller novel, and the fourth in the Bob Lee Swagger series by Stephen Hunter. In narrative sequence it is preceded by Point of Impact, Black Light, and Time to Hunt.
Alberto Yarini y Ponce de León (1882-1910) was a Cuban racketeer and pimp during the period of the Cuban War of Independence against Spain. Yarini was well known in his time, is Cuba's most famous pimp, and came to symbolize the concept of Cubanidad, the Cuban national identity, to many Cubans, long after his death.
Fidel Ángel Castro Díaz-Balart was a Cuban nuclear physicist and government official. Frequently known by the diminutive Fidelito, he was the eldest son of Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his first wife, Mirta Diaz-Balart.
The consolidation of the Cuban Revolution is a period in Cuban history typically defined as starting in the aftermath of the revolution in 1959 and ending in the first congress of the Communist Party of Cuba 1975, which signified the final political solidifaction of the Cuban revolutionaries' new government. The period encompasses early domestic reforms, human rights violations continuing under the new regime, growing international tensions, and politically climaxed with the failure of the 1970 sugar harvest.
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