Cuban Pedro Juan Gutiérrez is best known for the cult classic Dirty Havana Trilogy, a steamy, sex-soaked series of short stories about the hell Havana became in the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union stopped giving aid to the Cuban government. Unabashedly autobiographical, the book chronicles Gutiérrez’s desperate, promiscuous efforts to stay sane as his marriage and the economy collapse. Although banned in Cuba, Dirty Havana Trilogy has been published in twenty countries. In addition to his other books set in Havana — Tropical Animal, The Insatiable Spiderman, The King of Havana, and Dog Meat — Gutierrez has published seven works of fiction and eight books of poetry. He continues to live and write in his home city. Earlier this year, after much sleuth work, Nazma Muller tracked him down in his infamous penthouse apartment overlooking the Malecón. This conversation was originally conducted in Spanish.
-CRB
