The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave

by Esteban Montejo, edited by Miguel Barnet. Pantheon, $4.95. Ignorant but intelligent, superstitious but practical, courageous but cautious, austere but a woman chaser, Esteban Montejo, aged over a hundred, poured out the jumbled, glittering memories of a life that began in slavery on a Cuban sugar plantation and included two wars and an indeterminate period spent as a lone fugitive in the forest. Mr. Barnet took down the talk and sorted it out into this fascinating and extraordinary narrative.