El cuento cubano en los últimos años

Abstract

Grounding itself in the concept of insularity —condition and paradox of Cuba’s cultural field—, this article offers an analytical and general description of the Cuban short story in recent years. What was called the «new Cuban short story» has its origin at the end of the seventies, a moment in which the basis of the fabula seems to have been restored, laying claim to literary characters and a care for language and aesthetic emotion, in opposition to the realistic and social-cultural demands which were dominant until that date. The interest in literary theory and the reflexive construction of the text become the major characteristics of short prose forms in the nineties. All this permitted the renovation of the genre’s ethical commitment —now cast in a new form— and the forming of a wealth of creative production, a little chaotic and dispersed, at times, in false polarities such as that which opposes «violent narrators» and «exquisite narrators». These divisions should not, however, lead us to forget the very diverse formal experimentation —from minimalism to the baroque, from urban to erotic texts— which the Cuban short story has undertaken in the last decades of the twentieth century and the literary specificity which it boasts as its greatest virtue.