Reinaldo Arenas

Arenas grew up in rural poverty in Oriente province and, as a teenager, joined Castro's rebel forces before the revolution's triumph, an allegiance that curdled quickly once the new government began persecuting gay men and unorthodox writers. His manuscripts were smuggled abroad for publication since Cuban censors would not print them.

Imprisoned in Havana's El Morro fortress on morals charges and forced to disavow his own work, he wrote Hallucinations, a delirious historical novel narrated by a fugitive friar, partly as coded testimony to his own persecution. He escaped Cuba in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, posing among the 'undesirables' the government was glad to expel.

Settled in New York and diagnosed with AIDS, he finished his memoir Before Night Falls and took his own life in 1990, leaving a note blaming Castro for his suffering.