Cuban Nights, by Herman Portocarero
(B2) Curious name and theme that deserve an explanation. Herman Portocarero, born in 1952, was Belgium's ambassador to Cuba between 1995 and 1999. However, there is no better guide than these Immediate Memoirs" where politics intersects with music, adventure, sensuality and spirituality in random memories. Santeria and orishas, cigars and sugar canes, all of daily life, at least a certain life, parades here in poetic touches. The real magic of the story comes from the Cuentos del muerto (tales of the dead), a soap opera that repeatedly interrupts the story. Where is the reality? In fiction or memory…
(NGV)
(Ed. Luce Wilquin, trans. Magali Flamme, 220 p. 19 euros)
