An interesting account of the military aspect of the revolution is contained in Jay Cantor's (1948- ) The Death of Che Guevara (1983). Guevara was an Argentine physician and Marxist intellectual who joined Castro in Mexico, participated in the rebels' landing in Cuba, played a critical role in the final victory at Santa Clara, and became Castro's director of the national bank and later minister of industry. Cantor's novel is cast in the form of a first-person narrative, interspersed with excerpts from Guevara's fictionalized diary. In the section devoted to the revolution, Guevara describes Castro's "mad" plan to spark a revolution with a mere 80 men, but listening to Castro, he feels "limitless possibility. . . . Fidel was amplitude, Fidel was sweep, Fidel was permission." They set sail for Cuba on the "Granma," a hopelessly inadequate vessel that soon spouts a leak, forcing them to jettison some of their heavier weapons. Storms batter the ship, which runs aground in a swamp. There the rebels are almost wiped out by government troops lying in wait. A remnant escapes to the Sierra Maestra and, against all probability, becomes the core of the successful revolution. The novel goes on to explore his break with Castro over the economy and his attempt to spread the principles of the revolution to Bolivia, where, in 1957, Guevara is captured and killed. Implicit in this account is the assumption that the reader is aware of the mythical stature Che Guevara had acquired among young people in the 1960s and 1970s, as the embodiment of the revolutionary hero.

A less romantic view of the revolution emerges from two novels published in the 1990s, Cristina Garcia's (1958- ) Dreaming in Cuban (1992) and Pico Iyer's (1957- ) Cuba and the Night (1995). Dreaming in Cuban examines the divisive impact of the revolution on a family, some of whom became exiles in the United States and some of whom remained behind. The story looks at three generations of Cuban women, Celia del Pino and her daughter Felicia, who continue to live in Cuba, and Celia's older daughter Lourdes, who flees in 1959 after the birth of her daughter Pilar. The novel opens in 1972, as Celia, empowered by the revolution, is serving as a domestic court judge in her native village, Santa Teresa del Mar. Further evidence of her commitment to the revolution is her willingness to stand watch daily from her beachfront home on the lookout for a repeat of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Her daughter Felicia, once jailed for setting the face of her unfaithful husband on fire, lives in Havana, where she has become increasingly involved in Santeria, the Cuban mix of Catholicism and an African tribal religion. Lourdes Puente, Celia's other daughter, lives in Brooklyn, operating a bakery that she runs with an iron hand. Her rebellious daughter Pilar is an aspiring artist, completely Americanized except for the deep connection she feels to her grandmother, whom she has never met. While pregnant with Pilar, Lourdes had been raped by rebel soldiers and, as a result, is vehemently anti-Castro. The story is told from the vantage point of these four women, particularly Celia and Pilar, whose bond, leaping across generations and cultural differences, forms the heart of the story. Eventually Lourdes and Pilar visit Cuba, where Pilar comes to recognize that she cannot live there, but where she achieves a deeper connection to her identity, particularly with Celia, who bequeaths to her a collection of letters to the man she loved, written from 1935 to 1958 but never mailed. These letters constitute a history of Cuba, seen within the confines of one family. Celia's last letter to her lover, dated January 11, 1959, summarizes the theme: "The revolution is eleven days old. My granddaughter, Pilar Puente del Pino, was born today. . . . I will no longer write to you, mi amor. She will remember everything."

Iyer's Cuba and the Night is set in 1987, when the stagnant Cuban economy and the increasingly totalitarian character of Castro's regime have created an atmosphere of decay and desperation. In this context, Richard, an American news photographer, engages in a passionate love affair with Lourdes, a beautiful young Cuban woman. But Richard cannot overcome the skepticism and emotional frigidity that controls his life. As a result, he loses her to a mild-mannered, unprepossessing English schoolteacher, willing to make the effort to rescue her from a Havana pervaded by secret police, privation, and despair, an atmosphere that intensifies erotic pleasure, but it also renders love impossible. Lourdes's critique of Castro invokes the other famous Cuban rebel: Jose Marti, "Marti was bigger than Castro. He had room for revolution and for Love."

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