Amir Valle 

Guest of the ilb 2007

Amir Valle was born in 1967 in Guantánamo, Cuba. He studied journalism at the Universidad de Oriente, Santiago de Cuba, and Media Studies at the University of Havana. He worked in advertising, later for a Spanish music publisher, and finally at the Instituto Cubano del Libro. Valle has published over thirty books. In addition, he has been working since 1989 as a journalist, essayist and literary critic for Cuban, European and North American newspapers. Until it was banned, he was editor-in-chief of the online journal »Letras en Cuba«. In 2005 he left Cuba to go on reading tour, and was denied a return visa. In August 2006 he was granted a »Writers in Exile« scholarship from the P.E.N. Centre in Germany.

Amir Valle belongs to a group of Cuban writers who, since the early nineties, have been using the crime novel form to draw attention to social and economic ills, and to express – largely in a covert form – political criticism. In Valle’s crime novels – among them »Las puertas de la noche« (2001; t: The doors of the night), »Si Cristo te desnuda« (2001; t: When Cristo undresses you), »Ultimas noticias del infierno« (2005; t: Last tidings from hell) and »Santuario de sombras« (2006; t: Sanctuary of shadows) – the white, racist police lieutenant Alain Bec and his black friend Alex Varga move through the darkness of Havana as peopled by drug-smugglers and human traffickers, a place of prostitution, violence and corruption. Valle also deals with prostitution in his long-term journalistic study »Jineteras« (2006; t: Harlots). He has also written erotic short stories and novels, including »Ciudad jamás perdida« (1998; t: Never lost city), which has to date only been translated into Swedish, and »Los desnudos de díos« (2004; t: God’s naked ones). Although Valle has received numerous Cuban and international awards for his journalistic and literary work, his greatest success to date came in November 2006, when he won the international novel award »Mario Vargas Llosa« for »Las palabras y los muertos« (2007; t: The words and the dead). In the hours following Castro’s death, Facundo, who was his bodyguard since Sierra Maestra, considers the past. He recalls the crucial stages of the revolution; Castro the man with his faults, political intrigues, scandals and wrong turns and all the power struggles surrounding Castro’s successor. In this novel, in which his criticism of Castro’s administration is harsher than ever before, Valle juxtaposes the proclaimed history of Cuba with the history as experienced by its citizens, and he tells the countless stories which have in the course of years leaked out of the circles of the powerful. Amir Valle lives in Berlin.

©  international literature festival berlin

Amir Valle online: www.amirvalle.com