[lbo-talk] Interview with Cuban writer Leonardo Padura

[Joel Wendland]

Not Your Usual Suspects: Leonardo Padura Talks to PA
By Political Affairs
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/3091/1/158/

Editor’s Note: Leonardo Padura Fuentes is the internationally acclaimed 
author of several novels including the “Havana Quartet”, a series of 
detective novels featuring Havana police Inspector Mario Conde. The latest 
installment, available in English, in that series is Havana Red. Havana Red 
was awarded the Dashiell Hammett prize for detective fiction in Spain in 
2004. Adios Hemingway, the next Mario Conde mystery, is due out this month. 
Padura lives in Havana, Cuba.

PA: Do you favor the detective/crime fiction genre? If so, why?

LP: I remember that back in 1977, when I wrote the first book review that I 
had published in a magazine, it was a commentary on a crime novel. Since 
that time, when I was a liberal arts student at the University of Havana and 
wasn’t even dreaming of being a fiction writer, I was already very close to 
the crime novel, dark, detectivesque, or whatever you want to call it, but 
at the same time I was developing my preferences for the approaches of 
authors such as Hammett and Chandler. ...

PA: Havana Red addresses the very sensitive issue of gay and lesbian and 
transgendered rights in Cuba. How would you describe attitudes on this 
subject in Cuba today? Based on your travels and knowledge of other 
countries, how do attitudes in Cuba compare to international sentiments on 
this matter?

LP: Fortunately, in today’s Cuba the problem of homosexuality has stopped 
being a social “illness” and has remained only as a problem of a family 
nature, being that the Cuban family, by tradition, is very machista and 
homosexuality has always been badly regarded. But even so, many families 
accept it as something normal, even though it’s not exactly celebrated. Gays 
and lesbians always had full civil rights in Cuba....

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/3091/1/158/

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