By Fabio Agrana |
Panama City (EFE).- The Cuban writer Leonardo Padura laments that in Cuba he is read “very little and badly.” The reason is the economic crisis, he says, but also hidden reasons that force his compatriots to read it in pirated copies and digital media, greatly limiting the dissemination of his renowned work.
“In all the bookstores of all the Spanish-speaking countries there are my books, except in Cuba, for reasons of an economic nature, and for reasons that are hidden behind reasons of an economic nature, so that the books are not published and disseminated,” Padura (Havana, 1955) told EFE during a break in the workshop on writing for cinema that he offered this month in Panama.
To give an example of this situation, Padura indicated that his novel “La transparencia del tiempo”, published abroad in 2018, is in a Cuban publishing house “since 2019 and we are in 2023 and it has not yet been published.” “I don’t know when it will come out,” she added.
“There are problems with the paper, but there are other books that have been published in Cuba,” said the Cuban writer, laureate of the National Literature Prize (2012), French Order of Arts and Letters (2013) and the Princess of Asturias de las Letras (2015), among other awards.
Enter Cuba
This has led the author of “The Man Who Loved Dogs” (2009) to have resorted to making alternative editions of his last two novels, with a small publisher that obtained financing and which are, he stated, “the few books that have circulated in Cuba, printed for Cuban readers”.
Another way that his books reach the island is through people who buy or send them from Spain, Mexico and Argentina.
In some capitals and cultural markets in the region, such as Panama, Padura’s books are valued and, in certain cases, cost more than 30 dollars, something that the Cuban author distances himself from because he understands it as “a problem of the publishers, of the booksellers”.
“They are more expensive than in Spain despite the fact that the books here come from Colombia or Mexico, they do not come from the end of the world, (…) they are commercial decisions to which I am oblivious because I have nothing to do with that decision “, he claimed.
Padura also referred to the “fundamental” contribution of journalistic work in his work as a writer, social problems and the Cuban migration crisis, to his most recent novel “Decent People” and his literary and film projects.
The social reality of the island and “decent 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 that he captures in your literature so that they are part of the plot and story.
Padura acknowledged, however, that following Cuba’s pulse is not easy because with a political and socioeconomic system equal to that of the 1960s, it seems that nothing changes, but society “has been changing a lot in these years.”
For example, he said, “in this novel it is told that in 2016 many Cubans traveled to the US and returned. However, in the last year we have experienced a migratory crisis in which 250,000 people have left Cuba who have crossed the border of the United States”.
“That means that people’s relationship with the possibility of traveling has changed, and that has caused this migratory crisis, the growth of exile due to conditions of all kinds, from a political to a social, personal nature, which have influenced people to make these decisions.”
Part of the conditions that could have influenced this exodus of Cubans is that “so many illusions” were founded that things could change with the closeness of the relationship between Cuba and the United States, the visit of Barack Obama to the island or The Rolling Stones concert.
“And then, well, the known fact that all this was frustrated as of 2017 with the arrival of Donald Trump to the (United States) government,” he recalled.
Literature, journalism and new Padura 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, one works with reality and in another with fiction, but they are two works with a writing exercise that must be done with the same dignity,” said Padura, who stressed that his journalistic work in the 1980s was “essential” for him as a writer.
Regarding his new projects, many of which are film and for television, Padura announced that “after passing through several hands”, a Spanish producer from Morena Films has the option of making a series with “The man who loved dogs”, a novel that investigates the history of the revolutionary Leon Trotski and his assassination at the hands of Ramón Mercader.
He revealed that the second season of the television series about Mario Conde (“Four Seasons in Havana”) is also being screened, based on a tetralogy of novels that feature the emblematic detective, a project that is also “in the hands of other producers Spanish people”.
“And on the other hand, an Argentine producer is already preparing the scripts for my novel “Como polvo en el viento” (Tusquets, 2020), also to turn it into a series of 6 chapters,” explained the Cuban novelist, author of short stories as well. , scripts, essays and reports.