Tuyo
es el reino (Yours
is the Kingdom), by the Cuban writer Abilio Estévez, was published as part of our Andanzas collection
and it was absolutely clear to us that this novel would not go unnoticed. We
have been proven right: critics have received it with fervent praise; from the
moment of its publication, readers have called for several reprints, and
foreign publishers are in the process of translating it into eleven languages,
confirming that we have a masterpiece before
us.
“The
stories that make up this volume”, says the author, “were created over several
years, that is to say, during different spiritual seasons. The oldest ones
belong to the mid 80’s; the most recent ones were composed around 1996. Many of
them, or perhaps most of them, were born at around the same time as Tuyo
es el reino.” For the characters of these stories, the horizon is something more than a mere
imaginary line - it is a place where the fears, hopes and desires of beings who wish to reach the infinite are contained.
This is exactly what occurs in “Tosca”,
for instance, where a remote night of operatic glory will forever change the
life of a mediocre history professor. Or in “Regreso a Citerea” (“Return to Citerea”) and “Tres leyendas
autobiográficas” (“Three Autobiographical Legends”), which describe the
ultimate consequences of love. It is clear, then, why Estévez writes “man is equal to the sum of all the senses”.
“It is quite clear to me”, says Estévez
with reference to El horizonte y otros regresos, “that writing a book of short
stories does not help at all in writing a novel; however, in most cases these
stories have helped to fill those moments of fatigue, fruitlessness and
discouragement which the novel caused in me. In any case, the fundamental
relation in all of these writings is
that they have been created by the same paradoxical person.”
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