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I am a Cuban writer: this is my cross. Every being on earth carries a personal and un-transferable cross, with the same share of love and agony, since the time God or the Big Bang made us.

I do not inhabit Cuba: Cuba inhabits me.

And I love my island with the same rage that makes me suffer. I love her diversity and I suffer from her blindness. I love Benny Moré and Celia Cruz, Fernando Ortiz and Moreno Fraginals, Lezama Lima and Eugenio Florit, Carpentier and Cabrera Infante, Enrique Arredondo and Guillermo Álvarez Guédez; Wifredo Lam and Cundo Bermúdez and I suffer from the absurd reasoning that tries to negate who they are: the heritage of all Cubans, whatever their creed, affiliation, prejudice or extremism.

It is from that Cuba I write. Searching to free my words from the confinement imposed on them by what Virgilio Piñera called that “cursed circumstance of water all around.” Because I own a intimate country, non-transferable, that any situation or power can take me away: a Cuba that travels with me everywhere, free, seductive, arrogant and rebellious.

My characters gravitate over that Cuba like ghosts. Like Cuba, they also inhabit, seduce and enslave me; they dictate the stories that other insane persons enjoy or endure in my books.

In a world without dialogue, believing in freedom of speech is for the insane. I confess that I am stubbornly insane.

The freedom of the insane is one of the most beautiful things that still exists in the world today. Translating this freedom into my stories, my characters, is a dream that constantly wins me over.

I think this planet of ours lacks a little of that beautiful and free insanity.

This is why I write.

Mario Vargas Llosa

Lieber Amir, Endlich kann ich Dir diese Zeilen senden. Ich glaube, wir können auf spanische Art Du zueinander sagen. Ich schreibe Dir, um Dir noch einmal für Die Wörter und die Toten zu danken , das ich schließlich inmitten von Koffern, Flugzeugen und frenetischer Reiserei habe lesen können. Der Roman ist hervorragend, und ich fühle mich durch Deine großherzige Widmung hoch geehrt. Wie Du nur zu gut weißt, berührt mich alles, was Kuba angeht, auf ganz besondere Weise. Ich habe sehr befürchtet, dass, wenn Du zu einem Thema schreibst, das Dir so nahe geht, Dein Roman so etwas wie ein als Fiktion getarnter, politischer Essay sein würde. Glücklicherweise ist er nichts davon. Die Geschichte interessiert von sich aus, und aus ihr steigt auf – wie bei den besten engagierten Romanen – eine kritische Vision, die viel mehr ethisch und kulturell als politisch ist. Man liest den Roman mit Anteilnahme, voller Erwartung und zuweilen mit Humor, der die unerträgliche und bedrückende Spannung zur Entladung bringt. Herzlichen Glückwunsch! Ich hoffe, Du gewinnst damit die vielen Leser, die Du verdienst. Und ich hoffe, dass sich unsere Wege irgendwann einmal kreuzen werden, hoffentlich im geliebten Kuba, und wenn nicht dort, dann irgendwo anders.. Read more...

Mario Vargas Llosa,
Nobel Prize in Literature 2010
Carlos Alberto Montaner

On the flight from Berlin to Miami (9 hours and another 3 of delay), I read and deeply enjoyed The Words and the Dead. It seems well-accomplished. It was written, published (and given a prize) when Castro's death appeared imminent. The work begins with a laconic sentence: "Fidel has died." It was the perfect moment to review this absurd half-century of dictatorship and outrage. Amir had the good judgment to adopt the perspective of the Comandante and his entourage. This gives the book its plausibility. It's a novel that enters very intelligently and with a lot of information into the secrets of power and examines with a rigorous eye the clique that exercised it. Through its pages pass a good number of scoundrels, courtesans and other picturesque types whose profiles are painted by the novelist with a pair of generally accurate brushstrokes. I'm not sure whether Raul Castro, Ricardo Alarcon or Ramiro Valdes are the way the author draws them, but here we are entering a totally subjective terrain. I'm sure, in return, that this narrative must have dropped on Havana like a neutron bomb. The good thing about the fact that the premise ("Fidel has died") still hasn't happened yet is that, undoubtedly, the Comandante has read the book and has been able to start imagining how history would judge him. Now he knows that it's not going to absolve him. Read more...

Carlos Alberto Montaner,
Cuban Writer and Journalist
Herta Mueller

Dear Amir: I have had a guilty conscience for a long time because I still was not able to thank you for your beautiful novel, "The Words and the Dead." So thanks for this look at Cuba, which still has the misfortune of not being finished with the dictatorship. I can imagine how you feel. When I lived in Rumania, I also had the sensation of despair that exists in this novel. With best wishes Read more...

Herta Müller,
Nobel Prize in Literature 2009
Augusto Roa Bastos

It was enough for me to read his book of short stories and a couple of fragments of his next novel to know that we are before one of those born novelists who don't exist in great numbers, one with incisive vision, incredible expertise for his age, and with an admirable sense of literary and intellectual membership in his motherland. Read more...

Augusto Roa Bastos,
Cervantes Prize 1989