Camagüey (Cuba), 1937 – París (Francia), 1993

By Flávio Aguiar

The work of this Cuban writer spans novels, poetry, short stories, and an extensive list of critical texts and essays focused on themes such as eroticism and theories on the baroque and neobaroque. He began his career as a literary and art critic in 1960, when he left Cuba to study in Paris.

It was in France, where he lived until his death, that he became connected to a circle of structuralist thinkers and writers, collaborating with the magazine Tel Quel and working for Éditions du Seuil. This intellectual environment had a profound influence on his prose and poetry, which adopted markedly avant-garde and experimental tendencies.

In his fiction writing, there was a clear preference for the underworld, often focusing on the figure of the transvestite—an aspect that Argentine writer Néstor Perlongher interpreted as a “cult of the lyrical bizarre.”

He was recognized as an important innovator of literary genres in Latin America, which led him to become an interlocutor of fellow Cubans José Lezama Lima and Virgilio Piñera.

His novel Maitreya (1978) is one of his best-known works. Other notable titles include Big-bang (1974) and Un testigo fugaz y disfrazado (1985).