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Cuba

The covers of the fifteen books featured in the list on a yellow background
A Tour of Latin American Kid Lit in 15 Translations
By Ruth Donnelly, Deborah Iwabuchi, Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, Zoraida Rivera Morales & Catherine Xinxin Yu
This WorldKidLit Month, join us for a survey of some of the most innovative and compelling Latin American children’s books recently translated into English.
The covers of the five books featured in the Watchlist: The Tyranny of the Flies, Purity, The Emperor,...
The Watchlist: June 2024
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends five new books in translation from Cuba, Germany, Haiti, Spain, and Sweden, ranging from unsettling short stories to atmospheric prose poetry.
Beyond Queer: The Queer Issue
By Susan Harris
The contributors to our Queer issues produce narratives that elude facile compartmentalization.
The Lagoon
By Abilio Estévez
The present, very often, takes its definitive shape in the past.
Translated from Spanish by David Lisenby
Multilingual
On Cuban Time
By Esther Allen & Hillary Gulley
Cuban time moves to its own complex rhythms.
Project DreamReal
By Herson Tissert Pérez
“you can't go asking for the impossible.”
Translated from Spanish by Esther Allen
MultimediaMultilingual
Swimming Upstream
By Eduardo del Llano
“For me to answer that, you’d have to prove that baseball players have souls.”
Translated from Spanish by Dick Cluster
Multilingual
The Bleeding Hands of Castaways
By Erick J. Mota
But you’re a space man, and you needed to build me a bar on an asteroid.
Translated from Spanish by Esther Allen
MultimediaMultilingual
Interstellar Biochocolate Mousse à la solitaire . . . For Two
By Yoss
Set aside four containers to chill (but not in the freezer or in outer space).
Translated from Spanish by Hillary Gulley
Multilingual
Royalty Check
By Mylene Fernández Pintado
Elementary: The robber who knows his penal codes and his percentages also knows about literature.
Translated from Spanish by Dick Cluster
Multilingual
Nothing to Declare
By Anabel Enríquez Piñeiro
There’s not a single human on the ship besides us.
Translated from Spanish by Hillary Gulley
MultimediaMultilingual
Interview with Mary Jo Porter
By Hillary Gulley
Cuba grabbed me. I don’t know how else to say it.
Obama in Havana
By Rubén Gallo
“I used to make twenty dollars a month teaching,” he tells me, as he collects my twenty-five-dollar fare.
Graphic Novels at WWB: The First Ten Years
By Susan Harris
The narrative threads that weave through the last ten years tell a tale in themselves.
If I could live on the vision without trying to say it
By Pedro de Jesús
There is a false time / set in motion when we fall
Translated from Spanish by Dick Cluster
Multilingual
Black Spring
By Maxence Emery & Thomas Humeau
After Batista's dictatorship, Castro had the support of an entire people.
Translated by Edward Gauvin
Exilium Ergo Sum
By Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
It is impossible to find one's own path in literature without a certain verbal violence.
Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel
Multilingual
Harpooned Woman
By Anna Lidia Vega Serova
We bit one another mercilessly.
Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel
Multilingual
The Christmas Tree
By Mabel Cuesta
We’re in a strange land and Christmas is nearing.
Translated from Spanish by Erica Mena
Multilingual
There is No Theorem (A Regguetón)
By Omar Pérez
all things in moderation and the moderation addles.
Translated from Spanish by Kristin Dykstra
Multilingual
The Other Day After the Rain
By Johan Moya Ramis
He throws the arm with the machete around my shoulders, the edge of the blade scant centimeters from my neck.
Translated from Spanish by David Iaconangelo
Multilingual
The Crane
By Juan Carlos Flores
somewhat drunk he tap dances over the wet cobblestones
Translated from Spanish by Kristin Dykstra
Multilingual
Alive or Dead
By Jorge Olivera Castillo
One of the dogs goes for him as if there were nothing between them to block its way.
Translated from Spanish by Amanda Hopkinson
The Arrest of Heberto Padilla and Belkis Cuza Malé
By Belkis Cuza Malé
The many painful and absurd situations we experienced happened in such a short lapse of time that, no, it is not at all surprising.
Translated from Spanish by Diana Alvarez-Amell
Nine Nights with Amada Luna
By Leonardo Padura
In the beginning was the fascination.
Translated from Spanish by Cristina de la Torre
Boarding Home
By Guillermo Rosales
My angel . . . Were you ever a Communist?
Translated from Spanish by Anna Kushner
From Chapter 12, “The Autobiography of Fidel Castro”
By Norberto Fuentes
It's one of the Cuban Revolution's best kept secrets and perhaps now it would appear petty
Translated from Spanish by Anna Kushner
Mist: In the Capital City
By Reina María Rodriguez
How long did I contemplate the line dividing / the branch from the water.
Translated from Spanish by Kristin Dykstra
Multilingual
Making off Paris
By Ernesto René Rodriguez
Rogelio arrived in Paris at dawn. He was in a car accompanied by three girls; two were in charge of the wheel.
Translated from Spanish by Jacqueline Loss
From “Límites de Alcanía”
By Rito Ramón Aroche
She presumes to know me. Or pretends. Very simple.
Translated from Spanish by Kristin Dykstra, Henrry Lezama & Nicolas Mansito III
To Offer My Heart
By Nancy Alonso
The Monteroni family could tell exactly how Marcelo felt by the music he selected.
Translated from Spanish by Anne Fountain
From “Havana Black”
By Leonardo Padura
He imagined the cork's possible pain as if it were live flesh he was penetrating with his implacable metal corkscrew.
Translated from Spanish by Peter Bush
From “REX”
By José Manuel Prieto
To turn the stone over in the palm of my hand, scrutinize it more closely, a real stone, a diamond in the rough?
Translated from Spanish by Esther Allen
Nothing?
By Raúl Rivero
Where I used to dwellin my autumn, with my ragsand I say dwelledbecause I felt aliveinside there as never before.Where I used to inhabittremulous, subtleand I was recognizedby my sinewsand my veinsand…
Translated from Spanish by Diana Alvarez-Amell
I Don’t Want Anyone Coming around to Save Me
By Raúl Rivero
I don’t want anyone coming around to save meSo, whoever is sending me those nice thoughts,those smug little messages,–take it elsewhere.Cut off the oxygen now.I don’t want to suffer…
Translated from Spanish by Diana Alvarez-Amell
Puerta de Alcalá
By Leonardo Padura
Are you going to tell anyone we met?
Translated from Spanish by Claudia Lightfoot
You Don’t Have to Reach Heaven
By Francisco García González
I keep my hands off my friend's girl, and under that, I don't have friends.
Translated from Spanish by Mary G. Berg
High Fidelity
By Raúl Rivero
They’ll be free from the gramophone’s pain,its torture from the rub and the needles.Chaste, they’ll not know the sinof singing a capella while hungrycaught between the farce and the…
Translated from Spanish by Diana Alvarez-Amell
You Know My Name
By Eduardo del Llano
They served me coffee. While I was drinking it, they were looking at me so fixedly that I began to feel uncomfortable.
Translated from Spanish by Cola Franzen
Family Picture in Havana
By Raúl Rivero
Mom and I are alone once againthe same as it was at the end of the forties.Alone, in a house that’s not our own,we tell each other last night’s dreams(in hers two old people are always cryingin…
Translated from Spanish by Diana Alvarez-Amell
On Tyranny
By Raúl Rivero
The one that’s out there in the street, out there in the country,the rough and vehement tyranny,that governs my life as a citizenthat one will passbecause it punishes my body,but does not have neither…
Translated from Spanish by Diana Alvarez-Amell
Questions
By Raúl Rivero
Why do I have to die / not in my homeland
Translated from Spanish by Diana Alvarez-Amell & Jeffrey Gray
From Chapter 1, “The Autobiography of Fidel Castro”
By Norberto Fuentes
This is the bucolic and archetypal Cuban landscape that I myself will destroy thirty years hence.
Translated from Spanish by Anna Kushner
You’ve Never Seen Red Like This Before
By José Manuel Prieto
Perhaps this is the best moment to dispel any doubts the reader may have with regard to my intellectual seriousness and capacity (I doubt the list of authors included above had much effect).
Translated from Spanish by Esther Allen
The Culture of Translation
By María Rosa Menocal
Medieval literary culture is in general terms—even without the problem of the Arabic connection—susceptible to historical invisibility in many of its incarnations.