Trilogía sucia de La Habana
Pedro Juan Gutiérrez
FICTION | 1998 | 235 pages
Trilogía sucia de La Habana tells the misadventures of Pedro Juan, a former Cuban journalist living from hand to mouth in the squalor of Havana in the 90s, half disgusted and half fascinated by the depths to which he has sunk. Like the lives of so many of his neighbors in the crumbling, once-elegant apartment houses that line Havana's waterfront, Pedro Juan's days and nights have been reduced by the so-called special times - the harsh recession that followed the Soviet Union's collapse - to the struggle of surviving the daily grit through the escapist pursuit of sex. Pedro Juan scrapes by under the shadow of hunger - all the while observing his lovers and friends, strangers on the street, and their suffering with an unsentimental, mocking, yet sympathetic eye. A visceral and unforgettable picaresque, a damning portrait of vice and poverty, and an insane journey into the condemned soul of a sexual deviant, Trilogía sucia de La Habana is a Tropic of Cancer for these times.
RIGHTS: spanish ANAGRAMA | greek METAIXMIO | Italian EDIZIONI E/O | portuguese (brazil) ALFAGUARA | bulgarian JANET 45 | french ALBIN MICHEL | german HOFFMANN UND CAMPE | english (uk) FABER & FABER | english (usa) FSG | romanian EDITURA TREI | dutch VASSALLUCCI | hungarian ATHENAEUM 2000 | polish ZYSK I-SKA | croatian ZNAJE | finnish WSOY | swedish LIND & CO. | portuguese (portugal) DOM QUIXOTE | norwegian GYLDENDAL | hebrew AM OVED | spanish (venezuela) KHAROS | slovakian ZAMIK | serbian LAGUNA | icelandic SÆMUNDUR
“In the brutality of his honesty, Mr. Gutiérrez reminds one of Jean Genet and Charles Bukowski. He takes us on an unforgettable journey into a world where politics, spiritual anomie and desire make their troubled accommodation.”
“Gutiérrez can make the fabric of the city come alive in these passages; the ramshackle rooming houses become characters in their own right.”
“Gutierrez vividly re-creates the claustrophobic squalor of Havana’s underbelly with ultraviolet cameos of its lost souls and gritty survivors. These passages-searing in their rigor and lack of sentimentality-make “Trilogy” a page turner that few are likely to put down.”
“As radical as Reinaldo Arenas and much more hurtful than Zoé Valdés… Impressive.”
“This novel is an act of rebellion… It also represents the triumph of a pleasure that goes beyond any despair, without denying it. ”
BY PEDRO JUAN GUTIÉRREZ:
Mecánica popular
SHORT STORIES, 2024
Estoico y frugal
NOVEL, 2019
Diálogo con mi sombra
MEMOIR, 2017
Fabián y el caos
NOVEL, 2015
Corazón mestizo
NOVEL, 2007
El nido de la serpiente
NOVEL, 2006
Nuestro GG en La Habana
NOVEL, 2004
Carne de perro
NOVEL, 2003
El insaciable hombre araña
NOVEL, 2002
Animal tropical
NOVEL, 2000
Melancolía de los leones
STORIES, 2000
El rey de La Habana
NOVEL, 1999
Trilogía sucia de La Habana
NOVEL, 1998