
Cuba's Lack of Literature - Thevet
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/106941cuba-lack-literature/
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dsign
Visiting second-hand bookstores during the nineties was my hobby, in my
hometown in that peculiar Caribbean island. There wasn't much to read, except
a lot of old science books translated from Russian. And mixed with those, some
western textbooks printed at the same press than the Russian ones (I have
always wondered if those were reproduced with permission). For lack of
juvenile literature, I developed a hobby of deciphering foreign textbooks
during my teenager days...

But those were the nineties, and now is now. These day, bookstores only sell
"souvenir literature", dreadful works about and by the dictatorship ideologues
that ordinary Cubans regard with indifference at best ...

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laura2013
My last Feria del Libro was over 12 years ago and it was great! I got American
Psycho, a Nightcrawler comic book, and thriller novel (now or never by
elizabeth adler). Perhaps this was due to my ignorance as a young Cuban and
not being able to learn about what was going on in the literary world outside
the country. The Cuban Government censors many things, in my opinion, I wanted
to know what specific works the author thinks should be available.

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pessimizer
Can't pirate literature travel by thumbdrive? Maybe there's no desire for
contemporary literary fiction and its endless turmoil about coming to terms
with guilt, in a country where most people don't feel guilty.

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ch4s3
Assuming that assertion is true, which I doubt, surely they must have some
interesting conflicts in their societies and lives that international
literature could speak to, if only a little. There's quite a bit happening in
Latin American literature that may well speak to Cubans, but is unavailable on
the island. And since the government control which books can be brought into
Cuba, I doubt demand is the root of the issue.

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patkai
Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a good friend of Fidel, his books must be available
in bookshops.

