Cuba on Monday began accepting requests for electronic access to more than 3,000 documents from author Ernest Hemingway’s home on the island, including the unpublished epilogue of For Whom the Bell Tolls and coded messages the author sent when using his boat to hunt for German submarines during World War II.
Unedited manuscripts, a screenplay for the The Old Man and the Sea, letters to the Nobel laureate and insurance policies are among other papers at Finca Vigia, the hillside hideaway on the eastern outskirts of Havana where Hemingway lived from 1939 until 1960.
The 3,197 documents were scanned and organized electronically as part of a 2002 agreement between Cuban national heritage authorities and the New York-based Social Science Research Council, which also provided acid-free boxes and other storage materials to better protect the originals, said Ada Rosa Alfonso, director of the museum at Finca Vigia.
Alfonso said academics, researchers and others could petition the island’s heritage council to obtain electronic copies of specific documents. By lunchtime on Monday, the museum was working on the first such petition, from a journalism professor in Spain seeking correspondence between Hemingway and Spanish author Jose Luis Castillo-Puche.
In an interview at the museum, whose name means “Lookout Farm,” Alfonso said about 1,000 more documents from Finca Vigia would be scanned and made available upon request, though she did not say when.
Alfonso said the collection did not include any newly discovered literary works because the author’s widow, Mary Welsh, took most documents back to the US after his suicide in 1961.
“If there are any new works that have not been published they are not in Cuba,” she said.
Sarah Doty, Cuba program coordinator for the Social Science Research Council, said authorities had given CDs and microfilm images of the Finca Vigia documents to the John F. Kennedy library in Boston.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese