Dirty Havana Trilogy

£7.99

“Dirty Havana Trilogy” tells the story of Pedro Juan, an ex-radio journalist who wanders from one odd job to the next, half-disgusted and half-fascinated by his predicament. Working as a garbage-man, dealing on the black market, selling marijuana, and hustling lady tourists off the streets, Pedro Juan throws himself wholeheartedly into the pleasures of the flesh in his squalid surroundings: drink, sex and more sex.

These novels are many things: visceral and unforgettably picaresque, a damning portrait of vice and poverty in a third-world country, and an insane journey into the condemned soul of a sexual deviant- the title itself is probably responsible for Pedro Juan Gutiérrez’s reputation as the master of ‘dirty realism’. You can easily sense from reading the text that this is written by someone very close to the core of the material- Havana itself.

Living in Havana, Gutiérrez began to work selling ice cream and newspapers when he was eleven years old; he was a soldier, swimming and kayak instructor, agricultural worker, technician in construction, technical designer, radio speaker and journalist for 26 years. Not only this, but nowadays he is a painter, sculptor and author of several poetry books. Gutiérrez depicts life in the shady alleys of Havana with his unadorned style- without taking any political stance, his books describe contemporary Cuba in an unembellished way, and his life most certainly informs this style.

“Dirty Havana Trilogy” is one of the most celebrated novels to have come out of Latin America for decades.