Leonardo Padura: "In Cuba I Read Very Little And Badly" In

This content was published on March 28, 2023 – 14:12 March 28, 2023 – 14:12 minutes

Fabio Agrana

Panama City, 28 March (EFE).- Cuban writer Leonardo Padura regrets that he is read “very little and badly” in Cuba. The reason is the economic crisis, he says, but also hidden reasons that compel his compatriots to read it in pirated copies and digital media, which severely limits the distribution of his renowned work.

“My books are in all the bookshops of all Spanish-speaking countries, except in Cuba, for economic reasons and for reasons hidden behind economic reasons, so the books are not published and circulated,” Padura (Havana, 1955) told EFE during a break in the writing for cinema workshop he was offering in Panama this month.

To give an example of this situation, Padura indicated that his novel “La transparencia del tiempo”, published abroad in 2018, has been published by a Cuban publisher “since 2019 and we are in 2023 and it has not yet been published “. “I don’t know when it’s coming out,” he added.

“There are problems with the newspaper, but there are other books published in Cuba,” said the Cuban writer, laureate of the National Literary Prize (2012), the Order of Arts and Letters (2013) and the Princess of Asturias Prize de las Letras (2015), among other awards.

This has prompted the author of The Man Who Loved Dogs (2009) to create alternative editions of his last two novels with a small publisher that got the funding and which, he said, are “the few books that exist in circulated in Cuba, printed for Cuban readers”.

Another way his books get to the island is through people buying or shipping them from Spain, Mexico and Argentina.

In some of the region’s capitals and cultural markets, such as Panama, Padura’s books are valued and sometimes cost more than $30, which the Cuban author distances himself from because he describes it as “a problem for the publishers, the booksellers”.

“They are more expensive than in Spain, although the books that are here are from Colombia or Mexico, they are not from the end of the world, (…) they are commercial choices that I do not perceive because I have with this one decision to do nothing,” he said.

Padura also referred to the “fundamental” contribution of journalism in his work as a writer, social issues and the Cuban migration crisis, his recent novel Decent People, and his literary and film projects.

THE SOCIAL REALITY OF CUBA AND “ADEQUATE PEOPLE”

“Decent People” (Tusquets, 2022), the tenth novel in the series of his character Mario Conde, is full of the author’s “concerns” about “Cuban society and life”, difficulties of an economic, social and political nature, which he captures in your literature to be part of the plot and story.

However, Padura acknowledged that it is not easy to keep up with Cuba, because with a political and socio-economic system similar to that of the 1960s, nothing seems to change, but society “has changed a lot in these years”. .

For example, he said: “In this novel, it is narrated that many Cubans traveled to and returned from the United States in 2016. In the last year, however, we have seen a migration crisis, with 250,000 people leaving Cuba, crossing the border from “The United States”.

“It means that people’s relationship to the possibility of travel has changed and that has caused this migratory crisis, the growth of exile due to conditions of all kinds, from political to social, personal in nature, that have influenced people to choose these to make decisions.”

Part of the conditions that may have influenced this exodus of Cubans is that “so many illusions” have been established that things are going to change with the close ties between Cuba and the United States, Barack Obama’s visit to the island or the Rolling Stones concert could change.

“And then, well, the well-known fact that all of this was thwarted starting in 2017 with the arrival of Donald Trump in the (US) government,” he recalled.

LITERATURE, JOURNALISM AND NEW PROJECTS

For the novelist, journalist and screenwriter, there has never been a separation between his journalistic work and literature, since “they are two more or less close ways of doing the same activity”.

“In one case you work with reality and in another with fiction, but they are two works with a writing exercise that must be carried out with equal dignity,” said Padura, who emphasized that his journalistic work in the 1980s for him “fundamentally” is him as a writer.

Regarding his new projects, many of which are film and television projects, Padura announced that a Spanish producer from Morena Films “after going through several hands” has the option to start a series with “The Man Who.” Dogs Loved”, a novel that explores the history of revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his assassination by Ramón Mercader.

He revealed that the second season of the television series about Mario Conde (“Four Seasons in Havana”) will also be shown, based on a tetralogy of novels starring the emblematic detective, a project also “in the hands of other producers”. lies Spaniards”.

“On the other hand, an Argentine producer is already preparing the screenplays for my novel Como polvo en el viento (Tusquets, 2020), also to make it a series of 6 chapters,” explained the Cuban writer, author of short stories, screenplays, essays and reports. EFE

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