Just like to recommend Cuban crime writre Jose Latour's "The
Outsider"
which was nominated in the cat Best Original Paperback.
Very good indeed and amazing really given the fact that Cuban
crime writing isa closed - and even blockaded - world to us -
well to you lot anyway.
"Outcast" is a very good hard-boiled thriller in which the
central character, Elliot Steil, escapes from the failing and
restrictive socialist state only to land in a corrupt Miami
where, literally, everything has a price. The transformation
of mild mannered Steil as he searches for answers to why
someone would want him killed is the core of the book.
One of the things that makes "Outcast" so interesting - and
important
- is the way Latour is able to blend political issues
effortlessly throughout the book. Elliot, musing on the world
around him says:
"...America confuses liberty with libertinism...my homeland
and this country face the same fundamental issue: the limits
of control. In Cuba laws etc...rule almost everything a
person can do and you end up feeling enslaved. In the US
respect for individual rights seems to have turned freedom
into a form of anarchy in certain social strata."
Latour's next novel will also be in English, there's an
interview with CBS in January, a trip in February to the
U.S., and he is rewriting
"The Fool,", an earlier work, to be released by Akashic this
year.
"The Fool" is "a story about a Cuban sugar-trader who is
tricked into playing a role in an international drug-money
laundering operation. Much of the action takes place in
southern Mexico - both in a city and in the jungle. It is
written very well, extremely suspenseful, and the character
development is incredible." Definitely one to look out
for.
So there you go.
Pete
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