Special guests launch new books at
La Cabaña

Mireya Castañeda

• THE historic San Carlos de La Cabaña Fortress, the central site of the Book Fair in Havana for more than a decade, is once again the hotspot for book launches by specially invited authors.

February 10-20, some 15 Latin American and several European authors are sharing with readers their most recent works, published, for the most part, by Cuban houses.

No doubt of special importance is the presence of Rigoberta Menchú, the indigenous leader from Guatemala and 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner, with her children's book El legado secreto, co-authored with Dante Liano, and published by Nueva Gente.

It is a small book, but through its pages, Menchú guides young readers on a journey through her Quiché Maya roots with fables and legends about nature, the traditions of this ethnic group and family love.

Also very special is the book América Nuestra: Integración y revolución, by Luis Britto García, published by the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America Cultural Fund, an examination of Latin America's array of problems and how revolutionary, integrating solutions can be achieved for these related problems as a whole.

The Venezuelan writer is the author of more than 60 books. His outstanding novels include: Abrapalabra (Casa de las Américas Prize 1969), Rajatabla (Casa de las Américas Prize 1970), Los fugitivos, La misa del Esclavo (Andrés Bello Latin American Drama Prize 1980); Investigación de unos medios por encima de toda sospecha (Ezequiel Martínez Estrada Prize 2005). In 2002, he received the National Prize for Literature and in 2010 the ALBA Prize for Literature, jointly with Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez.

Continuing with the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), whose peoples are being honored by the 20th Book Fair, Sol Linares, also from Venezuela, is to launch her book Percusión y Tomate, which won the first ALBA Prize for Fiction awarded in 2010.

Ecce Homo II is a book of poetry that Ecuadorian writer Cristian Avecillas is offering for the consideration of Cuban readers. As he explained, the title is a biblical reference – ‘Behold the man', words used by Pontius Pilate referring to Jesus Christ – but could also refer to Federico Nietchze's philosophical essay, hence Ecce Homo II. With this work, Avecillas won the César Dávila Andrade Prize for Poetry granted by the University of Cuenca.

For Avecillas, verse as an aesthetic product has to be impeccable and beyond the poet's conflicts. "The aesthetics are the façade of a house. Within the house, poetry is the guest; the reader has to feel at home in order to feel part of it. In poetry, rhythm is fundamental, the notion of song and an idea by way of metaphor, the poem has to be a leap from beauty to truth."

Very newsworthy was the launching, by Cuban publisher Arte y Literatura, of a Spanish edition of Haitian writer Michèle Voltaire Marcelin's Amours et Bagatelles (Amores y cosas sin importancia). The prologue states, "Haitian contemporary literature has erupted upon the scene. It has reached enormous dimensions, given the great quantity of important new authors, the diversity of themes addressed and the variety of styles. It has received international recognition over the last few years, as is evidenced by the number of important literary prizes won. Female voices have not been left behind. The problems of Haitian women, of Caribbean women, are expressed in all of their magnitude, going beyond the usual topics, the sugary sentimentalism of lost love."

Precisely in this work, Michèle Voltaire Michelin, "…produces a subversion of literary codes, of moral and social values, as well as symbols, in accordance with a new vision of reality and the imagined, of time and space… brought to light, with the recounting of real Caribbean problems as a starting point, it is an account of what is not said out loud, of privately shared confidences about women's thirst for love and their sexual needs, told in a terribly uninhibited, sometimes comical way."

Comedienne, painter and writer Michèle Voltaire Michelin was born in Port-au-Prince and has lived in Chile, the United States and Canada. Her first novel was La désenchantée – La desencantada in Spanish – and then in English, Lost and Found.

The Planet Prize 1995 was granted to Sucesos argentinos by Vicente Battista, who is now launching the Arte y Literatura edition. Critics have noted that Battista's work contains all the characteristics of the so-called 'dark' novel, while praising the fluency of the narration, its humor and the author's ability to trace the plot, with excellent technique. A thriller, just like Cuban readers adore.

Another Argentine, the well-known journalist and writer Stella Calloni, who has decades of investigations into Latin American issues to her credit, is presenting two titles, a second edition of the extraordinary Operación Condor and her most recent Evo en la mira. CIA y DEA en Bolivia, which includes interviews with President Evo Morales and Vice President Alvaro García Linera.

Of her motivations for this book, Calloni said, "The world, and especially Latin America, would have to ask Bolivia for forgiveness, for having forgotten what happened during colonial times and since then, when the country was turned into a laboratory for counterinsurgency and new neo-colonial and imperial systems, which persist even today."

The press has commented that Stella Calloni has, in this latest great work, thoroughly exposed different foundations and non-governmental organizations, "which act on their own and under new cover in other countries in the region, like the Liberty Foundation, financed by USAID and UnoAmerica…" At the same time, she follows the popular resistance to dependence, which emerged with the struggles of recent years, those known as wars, the water war, the gas war and the struggle against the U.S. military in El Chapare.

"Elected by the majority and despite attempts by the United States empire to stop him, at 47 years of age, Evo arrived to govern a country ripped apart and sacked without interruption for 500 years. The painful and contradictorily beautiful story of a country where the people never ceased to resist. Evo symbolizes this resistance," Calloni said.

That's not all. Canadian journalist Keith Bolender is launching his book Huellas del terrorismo (Editorial José Martí), in which he "tries to give a human face to those who suffer the consequences of this criminal policy against Cuba. Extraordinary stories of survival, emotional and physical pain, of anger and even hatred are told by victims of this cruel reality." And from this same publisher, Primer poeta de las Américas: José Maria Heredia y Niagara, by poet and essayist Keith Ellis, from Jamaica, who has won the Dulce Maria Loynaz International Prize awarded by the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC).

Three other special guests are on hand with their books for children. Italian Carlo Frabetti with his novel Las islas desventuradas; from Austria, Ingeborg Maria Ortner with a bilingual edition of El Oso Bruno and Ecuadorian Edna Iturralde with her novel Simón era su nombre.