Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba / UNEAC (cover design: E. Abela Alonso; illustrations: Fayad Jamís; design: Esteban Ayala; author: Nicolás Guillén), "El Gran Zoo," circa mid-1960s. Offset print, book.

"El Gran Zoo" (The Great Zoo) by Nicolás Guillén represents one of the most celebrated Cuban poet's ventures into playful, satirical verse during the revolutionary period. Published in UNEAC's Contemporáneos series, the book features a whimsical hand-drawn cover illustration by E. Abela Alonso, with interior illustrations by poet-artist Fayad Jamís, depicting a stylized creature—part horse, part tiger—rendered in purple and orange watercolor with bold black ink outlines against kraft paper. The childlike spontaneity of the drawing, with its expressive calligraphic lettering spelling "El gran Zoo," reflects the collection's imaginative approach to social critique through animal allegory. This visual treatment demonstrates how Cuban book design embraced diverse aesthetic registers, from sophisticated modernism to folk-inspired naïveté.

Nicolás Guillén (1902-1989), Cuba's national poet and one of the most significant voices in Spanish-language literature, brought his characteristic wit and biting humor to this collection, described as displaying "the freshest, most ironic and youthful" tone of his entire oeuvre. The poems employ Guillén's masterful command of language and rhythm to critique bourgeois customs and enemy forces through zoological metaphors. "El Gran Zoo" achieved international recognition, translated into multiple languages including French and Greek by poets René Depestre and Yannis Ritsos. The Instituto del Libro was preparing a complete edition of Guillén's poetry for the Letras Cubanas collection, cementing his status as a central figure in revolutionary Cuban culture and Afro-Caribbean literary traditions.