Pacing the Lion’s Path in Cuba: A Conversation with Carlos Manuel Álvarez, by Anderson Tepper

Interviews Carlos Manuel Álvarez’s debut novel, The Fallen—a withering portrait of a Cuban family with conflicting visions of their country and their roles within it—was published in June 2020 and has helped establish Álvarez as one of the leading writers of Cuba’s new generation. The book’s schisms reflect deeper rifts within the country today. Armando, a diehard Marxist, clings to his idea of the sanctity of the Cuban Revolution, even as he becomes the pawn of a corrupt bureaucracy. Meanwhile, his son, Diego, disillusioned and distraught, chafes under the demands of enforced military duty. Mariana, the mother, is prone to mysterious dizzy spells and is slowly losing her grip on reality; while their daughter, Maria, finds herself entangled in a web of betrayals in the black market of the island’s tourist economy. Revolutionary idealism has run up against the harsh realities of modern life. The deprivations of the “special period” of the 1990s, in fact, still loom over the present. “Now, thinking back, all we can remember is a cycle of hunger, a state of siege in which there was nothing,” Mariana recalls, “an emptiness in every plate, an emptiness in the shops, an emptiness in the freezer compartment of the fridge, an emptiness in the fields and in the factories, and an emptiness, larger than all the rest, in our hearts and in our stomachs.” This past December, Álvarez came under fire from Cuban authorities for his support of the... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'

[ World Literature Today | 2021-03-29 21:52:25 UTC ]
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