Translation Rights TQE / Secret Inventory of Havana

Only a Cuban writer who has spent some time away from his natal city, Havana, can offer this view that, in contrast to the tourist imagery, reveals a secret Havana that the visitor cannot (or would rather not) know.  In what is a truly sentimental journey, the pages lead us from yesterday’s splendid Havana (that visited by Caruso, Stravinski, or Sarah Bernhardt) to today’s city, with its hidden dark corners and marginal neighborhoods, its sadness and hope, its hot summer days and downpours.  In the nooks of the trip, we will meet everyday people from Havana, and learn of the writers’ opinions about the city, from Cernuda, Hemingway and Graham Greene to María Zambrano and Wallace Stevens.  The result is a mosaic made up of both memory and fiction that suggests rather than explains, and where true stories are melted with the myths about the city.

Abilio Estévez was born in Havana in 1954 and currently lives in Barcelona. He has a degree in Hispanic Literature and Languages and also studied Philosophy in his native city. He has written two magnificent critically-acclaimed novels, Tuyo es el reino (Thine Is the Kingdom) -winner of the Cuban Critics Prize in 1999 and of the Best Foreign Book Award in France in 2000- and Los palacios distantes (The Distant Palaces) selected by the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia as the Book of the Year in 2004. Both novels have been translated into more than ten languages. He is also the author of a book of short stories, El horizonte y otros regresos (The Horizon and Other Ways Back) –Luis Cernuda Prize in 1986–, of the poetic prose Manual de tentaciones (Temptation Manual) –Cuban Critics Prize in 1987–, and of different plays, such as the monologues Ceremonias para actores desesperados (Ceremonies for Desperate Actors).