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Después de la evidente acogida quetuvo la narrativa cubana de los añosnoventa en las editoriales españolas,que significó el lanzamiento interna-cional de numerosos escritores comoAbilio Estévez, Eliseo Alberto, ZoéValdés, Daína Chaviano, Mayra Mon-tero o Leonardo Padura, solo este úl-timo ha mantenido, e incluso aumen-tado, un nivel de notoriedad digno demención. La indiscutible calidad téc-nica de Abilio Estévez, la faceta pecu-liarmente polemista de Zoé Valdés, lasensualidad de Mayra Montero, la vo-luntad de estilo y la fuerza narrativa deEliseo Alberto, autores ligados entoda su carrera a las mejores editoria-les, no han sido suficientes para un rit-mo de crecimiento con resultados enla crítica literaria y en el mercado.

La posmodernidad ha permitido borrar las fronteras entre la realidad y la ficción. En estas circunstancias apareció la nueva novela histórica que tenía por objetivo contribuir al debate sobre la memoria colectiva. El arte –en nuestro caso la literatura– ha reemplazado a la historia como fuente del saber histórico. La novela de mi vida (2002), con su peculiar estructura metaficcional, del autor cubano Leonardo Padura nos permite hacer un análisis literario a través del cual comentamos los límites borrosos entre la ficción y la realidad haciendo hincapié en la construcción de la memoria histórica de los cubanos.

Submitted by Isaac Viana da Cunha Araújo (isaac.cunha@ufba.br) on 2021-03-22T23:05:42Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DAS NEVES, Michele Sodré. 2019. Mario Conde e Iván Cárdenas_ Personagens-testemunhas da narrativa pós-soviética de Leonardo Padura.pdf: 1276843 bytes, checksum: 83c160e768d9026620fe42b416a717fc (MD5) Approved for entry into archive by Isaac Viana da Cunha Araújo (isaac.cunha@ufba.br) on 2021-03-25T20:20:09Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DAS NEVES, Michele Sodré. 2019. Mario Conde e Iván Cárdenas_ Personagens-testemunhas da narrativa pós-soviética de Leonardo Padura.pdf: 1276843 bytes, checksum: 83c160e768d9026620fe42b416a717fc (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2021-03-25T20:20:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DAS NEVES, Michele Sodré. 2019. Mario Conde e Iván Cárdenas_ Personagens-testemunhas da narrativa pós-soviética de Leonardo Padura.pdf: 1276843 bytes, checksum: 83c160e768d9026620fe42b416a717fc (MD5) A análise desenvolvida nesta dissertação é centrada na narrativa do escritor Leonardo Padura, tendo como base atetralogia “Estações Havana” (Pasado perfecto, Vientos de cuaresma, Mascaras, Paisaje de otoño), publicada na década de 1990, eo “O homem que amava os cachorros” (2009). Com os personagens principais de tais obras, Mario Conde e Iván Cárdenas, respectivamente, Padura reinterpreta a Cuba pós-soviética por uma perspectiva crítica e desencantada, abrindo espaço para o estudo do deslocamento do gênero policial para a América Latina. A narrativa do escritor colabora ainda para a investigação sobre o impacto da política cultural da parametrização e do “período especial” sobre os cubanos. The analysis conducted in this dissertation focuses on the narrative of the writer Leonardo Padura. It is based on the tetralogy “The Havana Quartet” (Havana Blue, Havana Gold, Havana Red and Havana Black) published in the 1990s and on “The Man who Loved Dogs” (2009). Pardura reinterpret post-Soviet Cuba in these books through the narrative of the main characters Mario Conde and Iván Cárdenas. He brings a critique and realist view to the story, by analyzing the police movement in Latin America. The writer also contributed to the research on the impact of cultural politics relared to standardization and to the “special time” on Cubans.

El artículo se adentra en uno de los aspectos menos atendidos por la crítica literaria paduriana: su obra ensayística. De gran importancia para valorar su auténtica personalidad humana y literaria, la obra ensayística de Leonardo Padura nos permite conocer al creador en su faceta reflexiva y libremente conformada. Las tramas del ensayo son estudiadas en tres frentes complementarios: los ensayos de cuño socio-político y cultural, los ensayos de postulación del propio canon de la literatura cubana y aquellos donde la función del yo autobiográfico brinda una visión propia de su realidad desde la subjetividad, pero también desde el análisis y el testimonio. This article aims to deal with a dimension of Leonardo Padura’s work which is not frequently attended to by scholarly research: his essays. They are indeed instrumental in order to get access to both the human and the literary personality of the author, which allows us to recognize the author as a reflective and freely shaped agent. Padura’s essayistic work is studied on three complementary fronts: essays of a socio-political nature, essays where he puts forward a canon for Cuban literature, and essays from which Padura approaches reality not only from his own subjective autobiographical perspective but also from testimonial and analytical stances.

Leonardo Padura Fuentes, escritor de la Cuba contemporánea, entrega una serie de novelas que han sido clasificadas por la crítica bajo el epíteto de detectivescas. Hay que subrayar que es cierto, pero también lo es que hay pistas textuales que no parecen tener la misma resonancia y, tal vez, se las perciba como incongruencias en la narrativa. Sin embargo, es una de éstas, en la que como un hilo conductor fundamental se basa este estudio; o planteado de otra forma, es un enfoque sobre una desarticulación gastronómica. Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a contemporary Cuban writer, delivers a series of novels that have been classified by critics under the epithet of “detective novel.” Though this is indeed true, it must be stressed that there are certain textual clues that seem not to resonate with the detective fiction genre and could be perceived as incongruent with such categorization. Nevertheless, it is one of these clues, as a fundamental conduit, upon which this study is based, a study that focuses primarily on gastronomic disarticulation.

This chapter analyses the representation of food, cooking and its related convivial aspects in the detective novels written by the Cuban author Leonardo Padura. These novels inscribe themselves into a long tradition of detective novels which consider the description of food and meals as one of their distinctive features (such as the ones written by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and Andrea Cammilleri, just to name a few). I argue that in Padura's novels the mention of food and cooking performs many different functions within the text. First of all food complement the social backdrop of the story and set the Cuban character of the novel, bringing in the elements of syncretism, mestizaje and hybridity which are essential to fully understand Cuban identity. The author always presents classical dishes of the Cuban tradition, recovering the cultural roots of its characters and of his nation. However in Padura's novel cooking and food are also an important indicator of the specific historical moment in which the story is set and they provide important elements to understand the social situation of the time. References to cooking and food are used here to describe the food shortage affecting the island, as a consequence of the US embargo, and to denounce the hidden or semi-hidden presence of the black market economy in Cuba. Secondly food contributes strongly to the characterization of the protagonist of Padura's novels: the detective Mario Conde. In this case food, is used to describe the personal and psychological world of the protagonist and his affective sphere. Finally the convivial aspect of food allows Padura to represent the emotional bond between his characters and to trace the profile of a specific generation of Cubans born just before the Revolution and educated in the Revolutionary ideology. Food provides, thus, the opportunity to bridge the national tradition and memory with a specific generational experience and identity.

En este artículo se analizan dos novelas del cubano Leonardo Padura (El hombre que amaba a los perros y La novela de mi vida) que no pertenecen al ciclo policíaco del personaje Mario Conde pero que comparten diversos aspectos tanto estructurales como temáticos que facilitan el examen conjunto. Ambas novelas trabajan con material biográfico empírico y establecen ambiciosas perspectivas sobre la historia de Cuba, a partir de la degradación de la utopía comunista y del proyecto independentista liberal, respectivamente. En ese sentido, las dos novelas conectan con los grandes proyectos narrativos macrohistóricos del boom latinoamericano de la segunda mitad del siglo XX (con Alejo Carpentier, especialmente), pero ofreciendo una visión posutópica en la que el declive del comunismo es aún más intenso que el del nacionalismo. This article discusses two novels by Cuban writer Leonardo Padura (El hombre que amaba a los perros y La novela de mi vida) which do not belong to the pólice cycle of the character Mario Conde but who share various both structural and thematic aspects that facilitate the joint examination. Both novels work with biographical and empirical material and set ambitious perspectives on the history of Cuba, starting from the degradation of the Communist utopia and of the liberal project of independence, respectively. In that sense, the two novels connect with the large narrative projects of the boom Latin American of the second half of the century XX (with Alejo Carpentier, especially), but offering a post-utopian vision in which the decline of the Communism is even more intense that the of the nationalism.

Au cours d’une histoire tourmentée, l’Amérique Latine a conjugué l’exil sous bien des formes et nombreux ont été ses ressortissants condamnés à quitter leur pays pour parfois n’y jamais revenir. Dans son roman Le palmier et l’étoile, l’écrivain cubain Leonardo Padura, qui vit et écrit à Cuba, s’attache à la condition de l’exil à deux époques différentes (le début du xixe siècle et la fin du xxe siècle) à travers des personnages réels ou imaginaires et dans deux narrations distinctes : l’autobiographie fictive du grand poète cubain José María Heredia (1803-1839) condamné à l’exil pour avoir conspiré en faveur de l’indépendance au sein d’une loge maçonnique ; et l’histoire de Fernando Terry, expulsé lui aussi et revenant momentanément à Cuba en 1992 après dix-huit ans d’exil en Espagne. Deux histoires parallèles auxquelles s’ajoutent celles d’autres intellectuels qui mettent en relief des expériences souvent similaires. Cet article s’attache à analyser les difficultés d’adaptation à des espaces hostiles, invisibles ou reconstitués, l’écriture inspirée par la nostalgie puis le tarissement de l’inspiration, le refus du retour ou le désir ardent de fouler à nouveau sa terre en prélude à la mort… L’exil dans Le palmier et l’étoile est une prison dans laquelle l’individu survit et cesse de créer, séparé de son île par une mer qui emprisonne encore davantage ceux qui ont dû la traverser. In the course of its tormented history, Latin America has known many forms of exile; many of its natives have been condemned to leave their country, often never to return. In La novela de mi vida, the Cuban writer Leonardo Padura explores the condition of exile. He approached the subject in two different historical periods, the late 19th and the late 20th century, via real or imaginary characters. He made two different narrations: the fictive autobiography of the great Cuban poet José María Heredia (1803-1839), condemned to exile for having taken part in a pro-independence conspiracy as a member of a Masonic lodge, and the story of Fernando Terry, who received permission to return briefly to Cuba in 1992 after 18 years of exile in Spain. To those two parallel stories are added these of other intellectuals who bring into relief other often similar experiences: the difficulty of adapting to hostile, invisible or reconstituted spaces; the experience of the writer who is inspired by nostalgia and then undergoes a drying-up of inspiration; the refusal to return home or the ardent desire to come back to one’s birthplace as a prelude to death. This presentation will explore different aspects of exile which reflect, no doubt, Leonardo Padura’s own sentiment: exile is a prison in which individuals are in a state of survival, separated from their island by an ocean that encloses even more those who had to cross it.

Leonardo Padura se aleja de los modelos de la novela policial cubana de los años setenta y ochenta mediante la construcción de un personaje polémico, Mario Conde, que desautoriza a los personajes prototípicos de la novela revolucionaria, de carácter triunfalista, concebida como arte al servicio del régimen castrista, y describe el desencanto de una generación que mira al pasado con nostalgia. Leonardo Padura moves away from the patterns of 70’s and 80’s Cuban Police Novel through the construction of a controversial character, Mario Conde, who disavows the typical characters of therevolutionary novel, created as a kind of art that serves the Castro’s Regime, and describes the disenchantment of a generation who has a nostalgic image from the past.

Este estudio revisa la novela de Leonardo Padura Pasado perfecto(1991) para reflexionar sobre la imagen de la nostalgia exhibida en este texto que inicia una serie de novelas policiales protagonizadas por el detective Mario Conde. Propone que la imagen de la nostalgia, interconectada con las categorías del extravío y descontento, funciona como principio organizador de este relato. Por lo tanto, constituye un rasgo fundamental de la caracterización ético-existencial e ideológica del protagonista. El análisis reconoce los mecanismos internos de la nostalgia en Pasado perfectoy ausculta su enlace con el proyecto estético-ideológico de Padura, el cual confluye en un diagnóstico crítico del entorno social cubano en que ha vivido el autor. De este modo, la imagen de la nostalgia en la novela se conecta con impulsos iconoclastas que desafían las prácticas, los conocimientos y discursos que estructuran la historia oficialmente institucionalizada. Consecuentemente, la imaginación nostálgica adquiere una dimensión ética al reclamar formas de convivencia que podrían haber existido. This study examines the novel by Leonardo Padura, Pasado perfecto(1991), and considers the image of nostalgia exhibited in this text, which initiates a series of police novels with detective Mario Conde as the protagonist. This article proposes that the image of nostalgia, interconnected with categories of loss and discontent, functions as the organizing principle of this novel. Therefore, it constitutes a fundamental feature of the ethical-existential and ideological characterization of the protagonist. This analysis recognizes the internal mechanisms of nostalgia in the novel and assesses their link with Padura’s esthetic and ideological project, which converges in a critical diagnosis of the social environment of Cuba where the author has lived. In thisway, the image of nostalgia in Pasado perfectois connected with iconoclastic impulses that challenge the practices, knowledge, and discourses that structure the officially institutionalized history. Consequently, the nostalgic imagination acquires an ethical dimension by reclaiming relationships and communities that could have been. Fil: García-Corales, Guillermo. Baylor University; Estados Unidos.

This thesis establishes that disenchantment in the city of La Habana is a recurring theme in the narrative of Cuban author Leonardo Padura Fuentes. It involves a close reading of seven novels written and published between 1991 and 2009. Based chronologically on the publication of each of the seven novels analysed, each Chapter evaluates how the author represents a different contributing factor or factors to the disenchantment of the city of La Habana in his novels. Disenchantment in this thesis refers to the state of disillusion and disappointment felt by the inhabitants of the city of La Habana with the Cuban Revolution. His historical fiction shows a similar concern with political disenchantment. Disenchantment is most strongly felt by Padura's own generation; those who were born in the 1950s and educated solely by the Revolution. Although there have been several studies published on the detective fiction of Padura, to my knowledge no extensive study has yet been carried out which is specific to the theme of disenchantment and the city in the work of Padura, thereby making this thesis an original contribution to knowledge. 2018-05-31

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