The cigar named after a novel

Since 1865, Cuban cigar factories have kept a singular trade alive: the lector, the factory reader. Rolling cigars is silent, repetitive work, so the rollers themselves paid a colleague to climb onto a platform and read aloud through the working day: newspapers in the morning, novels in the afternoon. Dumas, Hugo, Zola, Galdós. The listeners voted on the next book and applauded good chapters by rapping the tables with their rolling knives.

One novel ruled over all the others: The Count of Monte Cristo. It was loved so much, for so many years, that in 1935, when the owners of a Havana factory needed a name for their new brand, there was little to discuss: they called it Montecristo. Today it is one of the most celebrated cigars in the world, and it owes its name not to an estate or a family, but to hours of reading aloud among tobacco leaves.

The trade, by the way, is still alive: Cuba declared it part of the nation's cultural heritage in 2012, and in many factories someone still opens a book in front of the rolling tables every morning.