Havana, January 31 - “Cuentos. Short Stories,” by the Cuban poet and novelist José Lezama Lima (1910–1976), is the title that will be presented today in the traditional Saturday Book event, held in the Calle de Madera of Havana’s Historic Center.
Against the strictest definitions of the short story as a genre, the author’s tales invite reflection, according to the call to discuss this work, published by Editorial José Martí.
The relationship of the author of Death of Narcissus with his short prose is contradictory. His poetics are totalizing, and when it comes to making literature, it is done on a grand scale, adds the text.
“He does not seem too concerned with granting them the label of short story and, sometimes, when he does, he ends up forgetting it,” the publication clarifies.
Those included in this book, it explains, were written by him as independent texts, worlds in some way closed in on themselves.
José Lezama Lima, although he devoted much of his work to poetry and essays, is remembered for his novel Paradiso, published in 1966 and considered one of the masterpieces of 20th-century narrative.
The writer has influenced numerous authors of his time and later. Additionally, he was one of the most important figures in island literature.
