XXX International Book Fair of Havana.

Photo: Irene Pérez/ Cubadebate.

Perhaps the best-known Colombian author in Cuba is Gabriel García Márquez, but the literature of that country is as broad as its culture itself, from the time of the New Kingdom of Granada to the present day, in addition to the oral literature of the indigenous people, compiled by the chroniclers of the Indies and later, by researchers and anthropologists.

This South American nation ─ to which it is tied by historical ties and friendship with Cuba ─

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It will be a treat to one of the most prolific and important literatures on the continent, with names like Laura Restrepo, José Caicedo Rojas, Jorge Isaacs, José Eustasio Rivera, Germán Castro Caicedo, Héctor Abad Faciolince, Juan Gabriel Vásquez and Gabriel García Márquez topping the list. .

National identity, the country's political history, magical realism, author literature, descriptions of violence due to armed conflicts, romance, landscape, folklore and the popular, life and death, are themes that are reflected on the pages of his books.

That sap reaches the largest of the Antilles, so that Cuban readers can drink and be nourished by Colombian culture.

What are the spaces to get to know Colombia at FILH 2023?

In addition to the stand of the guest of honor country, the Colombian delegation will participate in panels, conferences, colloquiums and book presentations.

Here are some recommendations from

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• Discussion “Art as a tool for building peace and restoring the social fabric”, Nicolás Guillén Hall of the Morro Cabaña Historical Complex.

• Discussion "Gabriel García Márquez in Cuba" in the Nicolás Guillén Room of the Morro Cabaña Historical Complex

• Conversation "Poetics and politics of children's literature" in the Alejo Carpentier Room

• Conversation "Culture and the legacy of truth" in the Alejo Carpentier Room

• Lecture "Memory as a dramaturgical source" in the Alejo Carpentier Room

• Discussion "The voices of the territory: poetry, writing and orality of the native peoples of Putumayo and Guajira"

• Discussion “Women and the transformation of society” in the Alejo Carpentier Room

• Presentation of "What was not said", winning work of the 2022 National Novel Award in the Alejo Carpentier Room

• Conversation "Life and work of Laura Restrepo" at the National Library of Cuba

• Presentation of the novel "To hell with the damn spring"

• Presentation of the book "Lisandro": The story of one of the most important minstrels of Vallenato music.

• Conference "The challenges of fiction: Eduardo Heras, teacher of two nations"

More than 250 books will arrive from Colombia, around 200 authors and more than thirty publishers.

Among them, reissues of most of García Márquez's classics by the Debolsillo publishing house.

Cubadebate recommendations on Colombian titles in FILH 2023*

• "Song of ancient lovers" by Laura Restrepo (Alfaguara Publishing House)

Obsessed with the Queen of Sheba, Bos Mutas, a young contemporary writer, sets out to search for her around the world, just as historical figures such as Solomon, Thomas Aquinas and Gérard de Nerval have done over the centuries.

And although the Queen of Sheba is elusive, Bos Mutas finds in her place the very earthy Zahra Bayda, a Somali midwife.

In this way, the real time of the present runs parallel to the immemorial time of the myth.

A work of fiction based on the trips that the author made with Doctors Without Borders through Yemen, Ethiopia and the Somali border, this novel is a beautiful kaleidoscope, a gateway to exciting worlds, an audacious amalgamation of genres, periods, profane rhythms and biblical, cruelty and solidarity, love and war, pain and healing.

Laura Restrepo accompanies, with this exciting story, the eternal walk of migrant women, who despite limps and stumbles always get up, keep going, learn to look further and further and cross the borders of time and space.

Song of former lovers outlines a seductive proposal: what if the great hymn of the end of time is not the Apocalypse?

What if it was rather the Song of Songs?

• “Librovejero” by Álvaro Castillo Granado (Fondo de Cultura Económica- Colombia)

A classic is an amulet that helps us organize the world.

At least that's how Italo Calvino understands it.

Of course he is talking about the abstract idea, the story, the words that keep ringing in our heads.

You're not referring to a first edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude signed by the author, are you?

For Álvaro Castillo Granada, in the book that the reader now holds in his hands, the answer is positive.

With an agile, intelligent, clean and complex prose, he exposes how used books, the object that we often take for granted, are the guiding axis of our existence.

Libraries, signed copies, editions impossible to find, whimsical titles, endearing writers and booksellers are the coordinates that guide this universe.

This “Librovejero” shows that the materiality of the publications shapes intellectual activity, that the object not only contains thoughts but also influences them, that the volumes have a life of their own and establish a dialogue between them.

• "The independence of Colombia: forgetfulness and fictions" by Alfonso Munera (Editorial Crítica)

The story of our history contains dozens of keys that are definitive when it comes to understanding the crossroads of the present.

In this wonderful book by the historian Alfonso Múnera, the role of Cartagena de Indias in the Independence of New Granada in 1821 is examined in a new way.

After "The failure of the nation" and "Imagined borders", two classics in the history of Colombia, this text can be read as an in-depth account of the role of that city from the 16th century to the 18th century in the colonial world. .

Cartagena was, from 1580 to 1821, a cosmopolitan city where Afro-descendants, Portuguese, Jews, and countless foreigners lived together, contributing to a development that has not been looked at with curiosity and detail.

Myths about the city and its role in the struggle for independence abound: it is said that corsairs attacked the city over and over again without mentioning that it was defended by them many times as well.

Or that it was a Spanish city without recognizing the wealth that the Afro world recorded in each of its stones.

That city that today is a symbol of Colombia in the world suffered a terrible siege that impoverished it and closed it in on itself.

And, most important of all, the role played by soldiers from the Caribbean, such as José Prudencio Padilla,

This book is a sustained effort to use the documentary sources of history in such a way that the very power of storytelling reveals the intensity of its meaning and its consequences.

“I hope that the reader, when they read its last page, will be left with the feeling that this book, more than answers, has awakened questions about the country that its founders did not dream of, but that many of the young people dream of. of today who walk demanding social justice the long marches of peaceful protests throughout the nation's territory”.

• “Memories for peace or memories for war” by María Emma Wills Obregón (Editorial Crítica)

What country will we be in a few years and how are the memories we weave today forging it?

What memories weave the tapestry of our nation?

It is there where the real battle for the Colombia that we are takes place, since historical memory defines what will be official and what will be apocryphal.

If we will appeal to the memories of a few, who mark dividing lines between heroes and villains, and for this reason they are suspicious of the difference and of everything that deviates from that official path.

Or if, on the contrary, we will accept a plural account of diverse voices where all of us who live in this geography can be included.

María Emma Wills Obregón explains in this book why the struggle to reclaim this narrative is essential in building the democratic country we dream of, making use of her memories and research as a member of the Historical Memory Group and later of the National Center for Historical Memory. .

With a brainy gaze and deep reflections, he takes us by the hand to the halls where the recent history of the country has been decided and the villages where people have lived.

Always with the question about the past that we will be, the present that hurts us and the future that we hope to be.

• “The story maker” by Alberto Medina (Siete Gatos Publishing House)

We spent three days in front of his house with closed doors, without any news, as if nothing had happened, as if the most important Colombian writer in history asked for silence to write again in 18 months of hallucination One Hundred Years of Solitude.

• "I measure my room and I stand on it" by Amalialú Posso Figueroa (Himpar editors)

The charm of these stories occurs when the eagerness of many to learn about Chocó and its culture come together, with the author's narrative ability to put the rhythm of orality and the spark of her style in writing.

That is why I am one of those who wants Amalialú to write more: from the voice of women, black and mestizo, which is her own voice, from her versions of the rituals, from her intense love for our land, from the Chocó of her memory created with the freedom of an erotic fantasy

• "Between independence and the pandemic" by Hernando Gómez Buendía (Rey Naranjo Editores)

This combination, that of an author capable of commenting on constitutions, taxes or the military like a scholar and who also "buttered" himself by doing politics alongside figures such as Alfonso López Michelsen, Ernesto Samper or Antanas Mockus, is not frequent in the national historiography and gives “Between independence and the pandemic” that singular tone in which the knowledge of a scholar is mixed with the worldly wisdom of who knows where the hell water gets into the coconut.

• "Gabo: Memories of a magical life" Óscar Pantoja / Cordoba y Rojas (Rey Naranjo Editores)

Luis Harss in his book "Los Nuestros", which presents the dawn of the movement known as the Latin American Boom, describes Gabriel García Márquez as "a man who can be shipwrecked without drowning."

This book aims to bring the reader closer to the life and work of García Márquez in the key of a graphic novel and thus share the epic that turned the boy from Aracataca into a true living myth of literature.

• “Not at all” by José Julián Trujillo (Rocca Edition Workshop)

From the very title of this book, José Julián Trujillo invites us to immerse ourselves in the space of paradoxes, since "absolutely" can be interpreted as a refusal to do something, in the best style of Bartleby, and at the same time as an affirmation of inhabiting a totality, just as Buddhism calls for.

These stories move between these two apparently contradictory poles.

One of the main aspirations, both of Dadaism and Surrealism, consisted of eliminating the gap between artistic manifestations and everyday life, to turn the latter into a territory where the ephemeral or the anodyne would become works of art. .

• “Keep away from the lukewarm” by Juan Manuel Roca (Rocca Edition Workshop)

“Keep away from the lukewarm” would indicate a position akin to ideological boundaries and, in transparency, would evoke a tribute to a religious tradition.

But the content of the book reaches an intellectual and literary balance that is difficult to achieve.

The author is aware of the failures and dangers of extreme cunning and, therefore, his reflections strengthen questioning, irony, creativity.

Roca does not avoid the opposite policy to that which induces the workers to, with faith, perfect their own bars.

In anarchist essays it can be seen that the government should not have more power than its citizens are willing to give it.

Religion appears because Christ was not a Christian, and he has been one of the few libertarians with significance against those who, throughout history, have reduced their ideas to suffering and guilt.

*Original book reviews

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