Dialogic Aspects in the Cuban Novel of the 1990s

The author analyses six novels of the "boom" in Cuban fiction of the 1990s that subvert homogenized views of Cuban identity.

This book examines six Cuban novels published between 1991 and 1999, all part of the new "boom" of the Cuban novel in the 1990s. It analyses how in undermining monolithic representations of reality these texts employ discursive techniques that question absolute truths, defy established boundaries of literary genres and challenge concepts of national, gender and individual identity. The authors studied in this book---Reinaldo Arenas, Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Abilio Estévez, Daína Chaviano, Yanitzia Canetti, and Zoé Valdés---are placed beyond the dichotomy of outside and inside Cuba in order to focus on the fluidity and heterogeneity of Cuban culture displayed in its literature. This study establishes similarities and differences in the way these authors create polyphonic texts that question whether notions of country and nation coincide in novels that respond to economic hardship, political and social changes, issues of cubanía, and exile.

Ángela Dorado-Otero is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Iberian and Latin American Studies at Queen Mary University of London.