Persona Non Grata: A Memoir of Disenchantment With the Cuban Revolution, by Jorge Edwards, preface by Octavio Paz (1993). Edwards, a renowned novelist, was Chilean President Salvador Allende's man in Havana in the winter of 1970—1971, there to open an embassy and establish a diplomatic presence for the fledgling socialist government in Santiago. However, his friendship with the dissident Cuban poet Heberto Padilla provoked Castro to accuse him of "conduct hostile to the revolution" and to banish him from the island. His indispensable memoir first appeared in English in 1977.
Guerrillas in Power: The Course of the Cuban Revolution, by K. S. Karol (1970). A longtime editor at Le Nouvel Observateur, the Polish-born Karol is a survivor of both Nazism and the Soviet gulag. Still, a hardy idealism born of a lifelong commitment to democratic socialism prompted him to accept an invitation from Castro and Che Guevara to visit Cuba in the early 1960s and judge for himself the new experiment in social revolution. No writer before him had enjoyed such complete access to confidential government files and to Castro and his comrades. Karol wrote an honest book, sharply criticizing Castro for becoming a caudillo. In turn, Castro denounced him—inaccurately—as a CIA agent.