Outcast - Jos Latour

Outcast is a smart, multi-voiced, savagely unsentimental Cuban crime novel that combines cultural critique, personal discovery and explosive violence.

Elliot Steil, the son of a Cuban mother and a U.S. labourer stationed on the island before the revolution, works as a down-and-out school teacher in Havana. Quietly resigned to the tedium of his simple life, Elliot - like many of his fellow Havanans - has put any hopes of a better future to one side. But his aspirations are rekindled when he is offered a 'once-in-a-lifetime' opportunity by a mysterious visitor to the island who claims to know his late father.

When the stranger quickly turns from saviour to would-be assassin, Elliot finds himself perilously immersed in the waters of the Florida Straits, face to face with a past that he has spent most of his adult life trying to forget. Surviving the ordeal, Elliot embarks on a search for the man who betrayed him - and on a journey of self-discovery that draws him deep into the deceit and corruption of the Miami underworld.