Cuba's Hammett Finally in English
Leonardo Padura Fuentes' mysteries set in present-day Havana get him compared to the hardest of the hard boiled writers, Dashiell Hammett. Until recently, his books werent available in English. Thankfully, Canongate books in the UK has translated two of his mysteries: Adios, Hemingway will soon release Masks. In the wake of his English debut, the marxist Political Affiars magazine talks to Fuentes about his writing, his politics and the future. "I would prefer it if the novel (Mask) is not read solely as the story of a dead transvestite and an old homosexual who helps a policeman uncover the truth, but as a metaphor for life in Cuba, a life in which the masks worn by people hide not only sexual differences but religious and social ideologies, considered sometimes inappropriate by the official orthodoxy." Read more