Novelist Leonardo Padura on life, writing in an uncertain Cuba

Padura considered the most widely read Cuban writer globally sat down with AFP at the Cervantes Institute in Paris while promoting the French edition of his book “Going to Havana”.

Cuba, under a US embargo since 1962, faces a profound economic crisis worsened by an energy blockade imposed by Washington since January.

Gas shortages and blackouts are straining Cubans, including 70-year-old Padura, who was initially reticent to discuss the situation in his country and hometown Havana.

“In Cuba, it doesn’t matter if your economic situation allows you to have a different relationship with reality. Reality doesn’t knock, it opens the door and barges into your house,” he said.

Still, the author wouldn’t live anywhere else, with Havana being a consistent muse despite the “complicated” living conditions though he acknowledged his “fortunate” financial situation compared to others.

“When there’s a power cut, I don’t have any connection and I can end up spending a whole day waiting to be able to get online… to do my work,” he said.

“I was telling my brother a few days ago, ‘Every time we go out in the car, it’s not that we’ve taken one more trip, it’s that we’re going to be able to take one less, because we don’t know when we’ll have gasoline again’.”

– ‘Palpable’ uncertainty –

Writing “Going to Havana”, in which he revisits the history of the city through realistic chronicles and fiction, was a “debt”, a “necessity” that he fulfilled in 2024, he said.

In the two years since, he said Havana has seen “more deterioration, but essentially the structure of the city and people’s needs remain the same”.

“Maybe all of that has just sped up over the last two years since I wrote the book,” he added.

“Ten years ago, what was happening in Cuba? There was a Rolling Stones concert, Obama was visiting Cuba, a baseball game between the Cuban team and a Major League team,” he said.

Compared to life in Cuba today, “it’s as if we were in two different countries”, he added.

In the intervening years, Donald Trump was elected in 2017 and again in 2025, applying a “maximum pressure” policy on Cuba, as well as openly musing about seizing the communist island.

Padura fears Washington could launch a military operation, or even bombings, the “collateral damage” of which would be “terrible”.

Asked what he would envision if he had to set a story in a Havana of the future, he said: “I don’t know what Havana might look like tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.

“The future is a huge question mark for everyone, and uncertainty is universal. But in Cuba’s case, it’s a very palpable, very painful reality that is right there in front of us.”

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