Arts and Literature of Cuba

Spanish literary prize, the Premio Princesa de Asturias. Padura is also extremely popular in his home country. He’s managed to walk a fine line: his fiction highlights many ugly aspects of Cuban society, and sometimes even expresses disenchantment with the revo- lution, but in a sufficiently circumspect manner to avoid

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government censorship. Born in 1955 in Havana, Padura majored in literature at college. After graduating, he worked for many years as a reviewer and journalist for government publications. He wrote fiction in his spare time. His first novel, a love story titled Fiebre de caballos (“Horse Fever”), was published in 1988. But Padura found his niche with 1991’s Pasado perfecto (lit- erally, “past perfect”; the English translation would be pub- lished in 2007 as Havana Blue ). The novel introduced the char- acter of Mario Conde, a disillusioned police lieutenant (and, later, private detective) with a drinking problem and lowlife friends. Padura said he envisioned the character as “a reflec- tion of the problems and the frustrations of my generation,” and he wanted his fiction to deal with “the biggest problems of [Cuban] society: corruption, repression, hypocrisy, ideological erosion, opportunism, poverty.” That resonated with Cuban readers, and Padura has published a succession of crime titles featuring Mario Conde.

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Arts and Literature of Cuba