what some people who have already read this book think:
“A fascinating, wry, vividly detailed and elegantly written account of a trip that no one else is likely to take.”     --Andrea Gollin, in the Miami Herald “Fleming pens a compelling and entertaining account of his walk across Cuba.... He is brutally honest....  This is perhaps the most accurate and readable work on Cuba this reviewer has seen.” --Lee Arnold, in the Library Journal “A wonderfully wrought tale” --John Hood, in the Miami Sun Post “Fleming’s prose is, at worst, a joy to read, and at best a laugh-out-loud experience.” --Peter Gutierrez, in Foreword Magazine “Charmingly candid and laid back...Mr. Fleming is refreshingly post-ideological.... Walking to Guantánamo offers a view of the island entirely free from the ‘political venom’ that poisons perspectives on both sides of the Straights of Florida.”            --Adam Begley, in The NY Observer “Fleming becomes something of a gringo Don Quixote: each tiny Cuban town offers renewed opportunities for comedic suffering...”  -- Jeremy Abernathy, ART PAPERS “Hemingwayesque” --Vicky Raab, in the New Yorker’s Book Bench blog* *Um, I regret to admit I suspect she was referring to the way I look
Curt Holman, writing in Atlanta, Georgia’s  Creative Loafing, did a wonderful piece that discusses both the companion photography exhibit and Walking to Guantánamo. You can read that HERE. http://bit.ly/4ZaVnqshapeimage_8_link_0
Walking to Guantanámo takes the reader on an unblinkered journey deep into the soul of Cuba. It's a colorful and messy place, chock-a-block in splendor and contradiction, sweet music and demagoguery, aspirations and failed promises. Richard Fleming is a winning guide, funny, and endowed with a keen eye. He avoids cliches and tourist traps and homes in on the numinous wonders of an island nation. --Rory Nugent, author of The Search for the Pink-Headed Duck and Drums along the Congo Meticulously observed and beautifully expressed, Walking to Guantanámo is a ground-level vision of Cuba that gives you at least a little of everything you ever wanted to know about that country.  With a wittily self-deprecating style, combined with a measure of real humility, Richard Fleming makes of this truly quixotic journey both a delight and a revelation. --Madison Smartt Bell, author of the trilogy All Soul’s Rising, Master of the Crossroads, and The Stone that the Builder Refused, and Toussant Louverture: A Biography Richard Fleming has written a gorgeous and amazing book, worthy of the strange and spectacular country that he traversed and explored.  I admire his prose, his insights, his honesty, his courage, his humor.  You can read this if you're fascinated by Cuba, but you can also read Walking to Guantánamo if you simply love a good book.                 -- Jonathan Ames, author of Wake Up, Sir! A bird’s-eye view that will both entertain and inform as to a side of Cuba rarely written about. --Oscar Hijuelos, author of Our House in the Last World and The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Many travel writers set out to find the "real Cuba", but none of them has ever accomplished the mission as successfully and as entertainingly as Richard Fleming. Richard is not your typical travel-writer--he's a sound engineer who speaks pitch perfect Spanish, a bird watcher as observant of human habits as he is of avian, and a well-traveled Caribbeanist and amateur anthropologist extraordinaire.  As Richard makes his way from Pinar del Rio to Guantánamo by foot, thumb and claptrap Flying Pigeon Chinese bicycle, his love of Cuban culture, his humility, and unfailing sense of clave lead him to adventures, friendships, and, finally, to a personal interview with Gran Bwa, the god of the Great Forest himself. This devilishly funny, smart and beautifully written chronicle deserves a place alongside the classic traveler's tales. Imagine a less-misanthropic V.S. Naipaul, or a warm-hearted Paul Theroux--that's Richard Fleming's Walking to Guantanamo.                   --Daisann McLane, author of Cheap Hotels Richard Fleming is an expert lover of birds, music, poetry, wilderness, the spiritual life, and human idiosyncrasy. He is also a superb writer, with an excellent ear and a sharp eye. Walking to Guantanamo -- a Cuban travelogue of and for our peculiar times -- manages to make the exotic seem familiar, and the familiar seem exotic, in a voice that is open, quizzical, unpretentious, and thoroughly beguiling. Here is a marvelous journey you've got to read to believe. --Sean Wilentz, author of Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 and The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln Few writers can combine literary wit, knowledge, understanding, and a keen sense of the unusual into something that transports their readers deep into a world only known from afar. Richard Fleming manages it, giving us a fresh view of Cuba, a country written about one too many times in prose burdened by the romanticism of revolutions and cultural pasts long gone. His account of traveling the length of the island is free of clichés and preconceived notions, and brings the reader along to experience Cuban reality.               --Andrian Kreye, arts and idea editor of Süddeustsche Zeitung and author of Uprise of the Ghettos and Grand Central
Listen to PRI’s “The World” segment on the book HERE
 
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