A new Cuban detective novel
From CubaNews
Edited by Walter Lippmann
In Cuba, detective novels are considered to be more than entertainment, and the most significant works are not – like in other countries or for other writers – simple “airport literature”. There are important writers of the genre in the country, among them Daniel Chavarría and Leonardo Padura, both winners of the National Literary Award (2010 and 2012, respectively) a once in a lifetime honor. They are also winners of many literary prizes in Cuba, Europe and the U.S. Their novels, most of them of the “noir” genre and based on social reality, have gained them prestige both in Cuba and in other countries. Chavarría and Padura are probably Cuba’s best known living authors and most published abroad.
Now a new Cuban detective novel has been calling attention even before its publication. Un toque de melancolía (A Touch of Melancholy), by novelist and journalist Germán Piniella, will be published shortly by Ediciones Unión [Unión Publishers] and possibly launched at the coming Havana International Book Fair in February. Two literary magazines are considering publishing excerpts of the novel.
Germán Piniella Sardiñas (Havana, 1935) is a writer, journalist, translator and music critic. His short stories and commentaries have appeared in prestigious Cuban magazines such as Casa de las Américas, La Gaceta, Bohemia, El Caimán Barbudo, La Jiribilla and others, as well as in publications abroad. He has also written liner notes for most of Cuba’s recording labels. He has published the short story volume Otra vez al camino (Editorial Pluma en Ristre, 1971), a finalist on the David Prize in 1969; Punto de partida (Pluma en Ristre, 1970), an anthology of young fiction writers and poets, together with Raúl Rivero; and the book on culinary culture Comiendo con Doña Lita (Arte y Literatura, 2010), in collaboration with his wife, psychologist and food critic Amelia Rodríguez. Several of his short stories have appeared in anthologies in Cuba and a number of countries. He currently works as Associate Editor of Progreso Semanal/Weekly, a bilingual Internet magazine (www.progreso-semanal.com).
Evidence of the interest this novel has generated are the following comments by well known fiction writers Eduardo Heras León and Hugo Luis Sánchez, part of the assessment that both writers made for Ediciones Unión and that will appear as commentaries in the edition.
According to Heras León, the book has “(…) a most interesting plot that follows exactly the rules of the genre: intrigue, mystery, crimes and plausible solution, which together with an intelligent and far from schematic design of the characters and a language perfectly adjusted to the contents turn the novel into a noteworthy example of the author’s high degree of professionalism and creativity.”
For his part, Sánchez believes that “A Touch of Melancholy is surely among the best Cuban detective novels of all times. Its greatest merit lies in intelligence and thus in the respect for the reader’s intelligence. The solutions are unexpected, ingenious and believable.”
Why has an unpublished novel stirred up such expectations? Will a work written by an author that abandoned fiction writing for many years live up to these expectations? In search of answers we decided to interview Piniella.
CubaNews: In the 1970s you were known as a science-fiction writer, and as such you appeared in anthologies both in Cuba and abroad. Then you stopped writing fiction for many years, although kept active in journalism and music critiques. Why have you returned to fiction; this time switching genres?
Germán Piniella: I stopped writing fiction for personal reasons that I’d rather not comment on right now. Perhaps I’ll write about it someday. Now I come back to fiction for reasons that are also personal and because of the insistence of some friends and colleagues. In the matter of switching genres, I don’t see any reason not to. Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler raised the detective or mystery novel to the rank of serious literature because it allowed the authors to describe certain facts of society, with its glows and shadows, charms and miseries – for experts, the stuff that literature is made of. On the other hand, there are great writers that have trod on different paths regularly. I think of the Argentinean Jorge Luis Borges and the Cuban Alejo Carpentier, just to mention two classics. In recent years, in Cuba we have the example of Leonardo Padura, an excellent writer of detective novels, but also the author of works such as La novela de mi vida (The Novel of My Life) y El hombre que amaba a los perros (The Man Who Loved Dogs), which have achieved for Padura as much or more recognition from readers and critics than his character Detective Mario Conde.
Daniel Chavarría is famous for his police and espionage novels, but also because his short stories are no strangers to other genres and for his autobiography (which in spite of its genre is read like an adventure – as his life has been). At present he is working on a project that has nothing to do with detective stories – the biography of Raúl Sendic, leader of the Uruguayan urban guerrilla Tupamaros in the 70s and 80s. I don’t use these arguments to compare myself with the aforementioned writers, of course, but to show that relevant writers refuse to accept that it is mandatory to stick to a single genre or subject matter. Therefore, I have that right too.
CubaNews: When you decided to return to literature, your comeback was not with a traditionally written short story or with a linear novel. According to some who have read it, A Touch of Melancholy, is a massive work with a complex structure, several languages and many characters.
Piniella: It is really long-winded, and perhaps I overdid it when I wrote 400 pages. But the fault is not entirely mine. The story I tell is also responsible because it has a life of its own. About five years ago I was writing another novel that at present I am halfway through, under the provisional title of Blues para Quijano [Blues for Quijano] (it will be much shorter, I promise), when Daniel Chavarría telephoned me one afternoon. I not only admire him, but we are also joined by a long friendship. What’s more, Chavarría and I share great friends, a passion for good detective novels, and a healthy enthusiasm for wine. The call was for proposing a double authorship in a short novel that his German editor had asked him to write. Time was running out and he had other commitments that would not allow him to be on schedule, were he to write all by himself.
I accepted, of course. After so many years of silence and since I wanted to make a comeback – a fact that almost made me a senile candidate for a beginners prize – to be in the international market hand-in-hand with Daniel was a great opportunity. His editor had two conditions: the main character had to be German and there must be a presence of Cuban cuisine in the story. Daniel asked me to send him an outline of a plot so that we could later discuss it and soon after start writing. A couple of days later I submitted to him a sketch of the story. But I didn’t wait for Chavarría’s comments. Instead I began writing the story of a German couple who arrived in Cuba: he to do business and she as a housewife.
For different reasons – of which neither Daniel nor I were responsible – the project fell through. I went back to my interrupted novel. But my wife Amelia, to whom I owe so much, insisted that I should go back to the plot that I had sent Chavarría and begun to draft. She thought it was promising. It was then that the nature of the story changed, but I kept the two original conditions, which I thought were valid. As it had to be more solid in order to be a full-length novel, the plot went back to 16th century Germany and covered several countries and time periods up to its climax in present day Cuba. Chavarría encouraged me with his usual epithets. Then…isn’t it understandable that a period of four centuries and a number of countries needed so many pages?
CubaNews: In spite of its length, the existing opinion is that the reading is not cumbersome, but flows easily. Did you choose to be entertaining?
Piniella: Yes, but not in the manner some people think this is done and consciously try to “lower the level”, use an “easy” language or a “simple” structure for achieving communication. I believe that above all a writer should respect readers. And of course, be totally honest with himself.
CubaNews: Tell me about the subject matter of the novel.
Piniella: I wanted to write a story in which fictitious characters (and some real ones who also appear) are motivated by love, aesthetic pleasure and/or ambition. Some struggle to maintain their dignity and survive, others are immersed in a game of deceit, fraud and swindle. And all pay a price in an atmosphere of cultural clash, conspiracy, sex and treason. It’s not a new situation, but one to which human beings return time and again. The difference lies in the anecdote, in how it evolves according to the idea. You have to find the language that is implicit in the subject matter and the plot, in the same manner that Michelangelo said that a sculpture is hidden in the stone. You just have to carve away the surplus. That’s the reason for the various languages, depending on the period, the country where the plot is evolving and the nature of the character. But there is no intention of embarking on an “adventure of language”.
I don’t believe in a pompous literature with long paragraphs filled with transcendent words and profound meditations, but where nothing happens. I am certain that if a word is not absolutely indispensable, it falls in the category of surplus. For me, the crux of the matter is to narrate what is happening through the acts and words of the characters. Every single work of literature that I have read and I considered great, regardless of when it was written, has been a source of emotion, not those that overwhelm and smother me with “important” adjectives and adverbs.
CubaNews: So this is not a thesis novel?
Piniella: Every work of creation, even a pop song, is an aesthetic proposal and also an ethical one, even if the author is conscious of it or not. That is also the case of A Touch of Melancholy, but at the level of a thriller, an adventure that evolves discovering new conflicts that on occasion seem unsolvable, until you see the light. Oh! And never leaving loose ends.
CubaNews: Heras León writes about a “very interesting plot”. Can you summarize it?
Piniella: The novel is a long journey of over four hundred years, from 1527 to present day Cuba. It is about the search for a mythical engraving by master painter and engraver Albrecht Dürer. The search is carried out by the Consortium, a German semi-clandestine organization dedicated to secret trafficking in works of art, and also by a lonesome rival. The investigation takes the reader through the Dutch War of Independence, a pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago [Road to Santiago de Compostela], Paris in the 1930s, the beginning of the Spanish Republic, Nuremberg today, Havana in 1959, and present-day Cuba. The thread is the engraving Melancholia II. (Dürer made Melancholia I in 1528, which means that he had the intention of making at least one more.) At the end of the book there is an annex (“Regla Fresneda’s recipes”) with the dishes that one of the characters makes and that are an essential part of the plot.
CubaNews: Will we witness the launching of A Touch of Melancholy at the coming Havana International Book Fair?
Piniella: The novel has had a long editorial process of almost three years. I wish it could be ready for the Fair, but that’s a puzzle no detective can solve.
