Muerte en La Habana
Rubén Gallo

FICTION | 2021 | 304 pages

Manuel Ricana is one of many Spanish men who arrive in Cuba in search of the erotic paradise they couldn't find in Europe. On the Island, he becomes more and more involved in the world of male prostitution—a carnival parade that includes recruits, soldiers, policemen, the military, sailors, and even a fireman—until one night, the police find his lifeless body abandoned in an edge of Havana. Who killed Manuel? The novel collects police interrogations, testimonials from escorts, and anecdotes from his nighttime hunting companions in order to build a multifaceted portrait of a character who could have been very dark, but who is ultimately charming and charismatic.

Muerte en La Habana is an homage to nights in Havana, with their sparkling language and the colorful characters. Like novels by Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Reinaldo Arenas, the novel is written in "Cuban," a street language that is witty. Death in Venice set in the tropics: a disenchanted Spanish man goes to Havana to die and meets a Cuban Tadzio: a devilish escort who threatens to kill him with pleasure.

RIGHTS: spanish VANILLA PLANIFOLIA | italian VENTANAS

“The prose is deliberately nervous, torrential, an incandescent nucleus that mimics the spectacular gesture of the acrobat: Gallo’s writing depicts desperate men, priceless and grotesque lovers, but also represents the polyphony of Cuban society, with the gay bars and cabarets born in Havana even before the death of Fidel Castro.
Gallo mimes a staging, he begins to choreograph an infernal music in which everyone is the victim and executioner of their own feelings, a waltz of hearts that cannot be loved but only devoured.”
— Monica Acito, La Repubblica