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Jesús Díaz Cuba/Spain
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Jesús Díaz (1941–2002) was born in Havana and is regarded
as one of the most important Cuban writers in exile. After having been a guest
of the Berlin Artists’ Programme Jesús Díaz stayed in Europe. He worked as a
film director and script writer and taught at the Film Academy in Berlin before
he moved to Madrid where he lived and worked in his last years.
Díaz founded the magazine Encuentro,
which has meantime become a significant forum for exile literature. He was also
awarded a Guggenheim scholarship and received numerous awards for his literary
work.
The author portrays Cuba’s
society, the hopes and dreams of the generation which lived the days of the
revolution and the young people who have grown up afterwards. There are those
who engage in political life like the student leader Carlos in Las iniciales
de la tierra (“The Initials of the Earth”), who experiences all the contradictions of revolutionary Cuba.
There is the impossibility of realising the great dreams of freedom and justice
cherished in the youth in Las palabras perdidas (“The lost Words”), where the young people’s
passion for literature, love and pleasure is crushed and their ideals
destroyed. And there are those who live in exile and return as visitors or
suffer from nostalgic memories like Iris and Lidia who return to Cuba on a
visit after long years of exile in La piel y la
máscara (“The Skin and the Mask”). As exciting as a polit-thriller, as
stimulating as an erotic novel, Díaz provides us with a vivid slice of
Caribbean life and some deep insight into the current turmoil of Cuban society.
In Dime algo sobre Cuba (“Tell me something about Cuba”) the dentist
Stalin Martínez stays in the United States illegaly, in the end is broken by
the inner turmoil produced by his love-hatred of his country. In Las cuatro
fugas de Manuel (“Manuel’s four Attempts to flee”), Manuel, a highly gifted
Cuban student of physics in the Soviet Union is on the run from the Cuban
secret police. In an attempt to reach the Promised West, he fails three times,
before finally succeeding and arriving in Germany, while the demise of the
Soviet Union is in progress. His story occasionally reads like a parody of the
fate of countless refugees. His wanderings stand for those of many people in
flight from persecution and in search of the right to a self-determined life in
dignity.
The
Initials of the Earth by Jesús Díaz is certainly the most significant
novel published in Cuba for the last three decades.
Walter Haubrich, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
This novel [Dime algo sobre Cuba] by Jesús Díaz also thrives on the rhythm of
Cuban songs and boleros. What is more, Díaz is a linguistic artist.
Evita Bauer, Süddeutsche Zeitung
Original editions and rights sold:
Novels:
Las iniciales de la tierra, Madrid: Alfaguara 1987 ; Barcelona: Anagrama 1997, 421 p.
Cuba: Letras Cubanas 1987 ● France: Métailié
2002 ● Germany: Piper 1990, Aufbau pb ● Greece:
Kastaniotis 1996 ● Mexico: El Juglar Editores 1989 ● Portugal: Ambar
2007● Slovakia: Slovart 2008 ● USA: Duke University Press 2006 ● Venezuela: Monte
Ávila 1992
Las palabras perdidas, Barcelona:
Anagrama 1992, 348 p.
France: Métailié 1995 ● Germany: Piper
1993, pb 2000
La piel y la máscara, Barcelona: Anagrama 1996, 225 p.
France: Métailié 1997 ● Germany: Piper
1997, pb 2000 ● Greece: Kastaniotis 1998
Dime algo sobre Cuba, Madrid: Espasa
1998, 261 p.
France: Métailié 1999, 2011 ● Germany: Piper
2001, 2006 ● Italy: Aìsara ● Poland: Znak 2002 ● Portugal: Ambar
2003 ● Romania: Humanitas 2007
Siberiana, Madrid: Espasa 2000,
228 p.
France: Gallimard 2003 ● Germany:
Piper 2003
Las cuatro fugas de Manuel, Madrid: Espasa 2002, 247 p.
France: Gallimard 2006 ● Portugal: Ambar
2003 ● Romania: Humanitas 2008
Stories:
Los años duros, La Habana, 1966
Germany:dtv 2000
(El polvo a la mitad in: Cuentos hispanoamericanos: Cuba)