Cuban Author Leonardo Padura Depicts the Country’s Disaster
he presented a new novel in Madrid
The writer describes a country where the poverty of pensioners and the opulence of the new rich coexist.
Por Yunior García Aguilera (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – The most-read living Cuban writer on and off the island, Leonardo Padura, presented his latest novel this Tuesday in Madrid. Morir en la arena (Dying in the Sand) (Tusquets Editores, 2025) has been described by the author himself as “the saddest” he has published so far, a stark and almost fatalistic portrait of national reality. Some 200 readers gathered at the Espacio Fundación Telefónica to listen to the creator of the famous character Mario Conde, and to buy his book and renew that imaginary photograph that many keep of Cuba.
Padura is not a gold coin. In exile he is often reproached for his ideological ambiguity and his silence in the face of political repression. Within the island, on the other hand, he is perceived as an uncomfortable author, too independent for official institutions and too famous for the taste of cultural curators. He does not belong to the chorus of “gratefuls”, those who claim to owe everything to the Revolution.
He recognizes that his success is due in large part to the luck of obtaining a contract (years ago) outside the country. And he himself complained, during the presentation, that his last books have not come out in Cuba, because, according to the authorities, “there is no paper.”
With or without criticism, it is impossible to deny his international recognition. Receiving the Princesa de Asturias de las Letras award in 2015, translated into more than 30 languages and a regular on the lists of best sellers in Spain and Latin America, Padura is today an indisputable reference. This Tuesday, he appealed to a metaphor that could well define him: a character who refuses to be heads or tails, and who insists on being on “the edge of the coin.”
Morir en la arena stems from a real parricide in a family close to the writer. Although the story takes place in 2023, the narrative covers half a century of national changes, such as the war in Angola, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the crisis of the 90s and the current disaster.
The pages reflect today’s enormous social divide, from the poverty of pensioners to the opulence of the new rich. It is no longer the music of Silvio Rodríguez or Pablo Milanes that accompanies the landscape, but the reparto,* a penetrating wave that floods everything. Padura even knows by heart the lyrics of one of those songs, saturated with “beatings” and “asses with authority.”
The scientist and writer Eduardo Lopez-Collazo, present at the meeting, asked him if he thought Cuba had a solution. Padura avoided a direct response. He defined himself as an observer, not a politician or sociologist. But in his eyes Cuba is a country in decline, with two million emigrants in recent years and doctors unable to survive on their salary.
Another attendee, Spanish by his accent, spoke plainly of the repression on the island. Padura spoke of the fear, and he agreed that Cuba needs profound transformations in all spheres: economic, political and social. He also acknowledged that the “control industry” is still standing and called the judicial repression following the July 21, 2021, protests “brutal,” when too many young people received sentences of eight or ten years for breaking a window. “If all those who break a window in demonstrations were imprisoned in France, no one would be left on the street,” he said.
The writer Berna González Harbour moderated the conversation and thought she saw Padura himself in one of the characters in Morir en la arena. He denied it. He only intended to satirize a genre of his youth, the “revolutionary police novel,” which, he said, had “much of Revolution, little of police and no novel.” Although he did not advance the correlation, he did confess his interest in vindicating that character.
“What keeps Cubans singing and writing?” asked another voice from the audience. The most ingenious answer came from the Nicaraguan writer Gioconda Belli, who recalled the joke of a poor driver who, to the same question from a diplomat, replied: “in addition to living in poverty, you also want it to be sad?”
At the end, among the audience, a Cuban woman wore a sign on her back alluding to the Cuban political prisoners: “In Cuba there are more than 1000 political prisoners just for asking for freedom.” Everyone noticed and took pictures of the message. She came up with her book, received an elegant dedication and a photo with the writer.
For many, this afternoon was the first time they heard Padura speak publicly about the island’s repression, unjust convictions and the urgency of political change. Perhaps, after all this swimming, it is not obligatory to die in the sand.
*Urban musical genre similar to reggaeton
Translated by Regina Anavy for Translating Cuba.