Sabor a mí

by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez

Sabor a mí cierra la legendaria Trilogía sucia de La Habana, después de Anclado en tierra de nadie y de Nada que hacer.

200 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 15, 1998

About the author

Pedro Juan Gutiérrez (Matanzas, Cuba, 1950) es reconocido internacionalmente como uno de los escritores más talentosos de la actual narrativa latinoamericana. Su Ciclo de Centro Habana ha sido publicado íntegramente por Anagrama, y ha aparecido en otros idiomas en más de veinte países: Trilogía sucia de La Habana (publicada también en títulos individuales: Anclado en tierra de nadie, Nada que hacer y Sabor a mí),El Rey de La Habana (que ha sido adaptada al cine por el prestigioso director Agustí Villaronga), Animal tropical (Premio Alfonso García-Ramos), El insaciable hombre araña y Carne de perro (Premio Narrativa Sur del Mundo). También en Anagrama ha publicado las novelas Nuestro G. G. en La Habana, El nido de la serpiente. Memorias del hijo del heladero, Fabián y el caos y Estoico y frugal. Vive en La Habana y se dedica exclusivamente a la literatura y a la pintura.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Essence of Me, Volume 3, the concluding novel forming Pedro Juan Gutiérrez's Dirty Havana Trilogy picks up where Vol 2 leaves off - Pablo Juan is still living in Havana squalor, only here, to add even more insult to disgusting injury, the opening chapter finds the author in jail. So much grime and grit. Rather than offering a synopsis or overarching observations, I'll let the author speak for himself. Here are six snapshots:

"I had a bad time at first. I got claustrophobic and I went berserk. When I realized I was locked up, rage built up inside of me, and I started to shout and foam at the mouth. I hit two guards who were trying to restrain me, and they beat me right there until I passed out. When I woke up, it was worse: I was in a cage, a small box with bars on all six sides, in which it was impossible to stand up or stretch out full length. You always had to be curled in a ball. The cages were on the roof of the building. And I was left there for days, out in the open, in the sun. How many days went by, I don't know. They brought me out limp, half-dead. I'm making a short story of it, because I don't want to remember the details."

Eventually Pedro Juan is sent away. He reflects, "I didn't have anything to do. What's more, I had no idea what to do the next day, next month, next year, or next century. Maybe not knowing is the best way to keep from worrying or sinking into despair. You don't know how you'll survive, but it doesn't matter. you live like a kite blowing in the wind, and you feel all right. But then sometimes there isn't even any wind."

"I had to make a few pesos. After a year as a garbageman, I left the job. It was too much work. Night work too. The money was good, but it wasn't worth it. I could make just as much or more in a day, selling any old thing. Anyway, the stink of rotting garbage was driving women away. They'd run from me in disgust."

"I woke up with a hangover from the rum I had drunk the night before. It had to be nine or ten o'clock already. Looking out the little window, I saw a tourist snapping photos of crumbling buildings on the Malecon. Her husband was videotaping the same scene. Tourists love the sight of decay. From a distance, it makes a wonderful picture."

"When you're single in the jungle, you've got to be constantly on the prowl, every single day. a man doesn't need much: a little money, food, some rum, a few cigars, a woman. Being without a woman makes me neurotic, but having one of them, awkward and stupid, always by my side, gets on my nerves."

"I had a pigeon trap on the roof. Two boxes, really, with a decoy pigeon to lure unsuspecting birds. On the nearby roofs, there were lots of messenger pigeon houses....Each day I'd catch one or two pigeons and sell them for twenty pesos to a guy...For all I care, he could have been frying them and selling them as chicken. I was just trying to make a living."

To imbibe the full Pedro Juan flavor, read the entire Dirty Havana Trilogy.

[Sorkunde · Rating 4 out of 5]

De la trilogía sucia de La Habana. Muy carnal y a la vez poético. Una mezcla entre realismo y poesia.