José Soler Puig, Icon of the Cuban Culture

Eternal glory to this man of the people who with his pen elevated the spirituality of a country, the soul of a nation

By: Ana Margarita Sánchez Soler  asanchez@enet.cu

José Soler Puig is an icon of Cuban culture. And beyond literature he knew how to funnel the very best of our essence turning it into the portrait of nationality. Hence emerged his greatness and his capacity to stick to the nation’s memory.

Owner of a narrative capacity which won him national and international recognition, his literary work reveals an amazing capacity for synthesis, direct narrative style and realistic ancestry of characters through whom he gave rise to conflicts of local and universal pertinence.

Although Soler Puig used to cooperate with the radio and the television, for which he wrote scripts, he came to the fore after the prize he won with his novel Bertillón 166, enough to carry off the Casa de Las Américas Award in 1960.

This public release of his work, in the critic’s spotlight, would be followed by others equally edifying from the technical viewpoint:  El derrumbe (1964), El pan dormido (1975), El Caserón (1977) and Un mundo de cosas (1984).       

 Many of his novels are included in the best environment he had: his hometown Santiago de Cuba. The family conflicts, the anonymous stories of anonymous heroes, the underground struggle, the drive for a better world without marginality, and with hopes for the future.

His existence as a humble man before the Revolution enriched his experience and provided valuable data which were used in many of the plots of his stories and novels.

Throughout his life he carried out different jobs: street vendor, day laborer, painter, coffee picker. Out of such experiences the seeds of his characters were born, like him attached to the land which gave eternal glory for the people he extolled with his pen, the spirituality of a country, the soul of a nation.

Translated by ESTI