First published 2010
Julio Lobo controls vast sugar plantations across Cuba in the 1950s, earning him the title King of Sugar and making him the richest man on the island. Born in 1898 when Cuba gained independence, Lobo has survived a firing squad and gangland shootings while building his fortune. He collects Napoleon's artifacts, including the emperor's teeth and death mask, and throws lavish parties where he fills his swimming pool with perfume for visiting movie stars like Esther Williams. When Fidel Castro takes power, Che Guevara offers Lobo the position of sugar minister in the new Communist government. Lobo refuses, knowing their worldviews cannot align. The regime seizes his properties and destroys his wealth overnight. Financial Times journalist John Paul Rathbone tells this story through his family's own experience of revolution and exile. His mother belonged to Havana's elite society and knew Lobo's daughters. Rathbone weaves together Lobo's rise and fall with his family's departure from Cuba, creating a portrait of a vanished world and the personal cost of political upheaval.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, business, biography-memoir
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fall-from-grace, rags-to-riches
Setting: Cuba, Havana
Period: 1950s
320 pages · Hardcover · Penguin Press