Present time history in contemporary cuban narrative: Havana in the novel´s of Leonardo Padura

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the importance of Leonardo Padura’s novels to understand the present time history. For this, we used authors who have worked with the relations between History and Literature and who supported our research: Jablonka (2020), Ricoeur (2010), Certeau (2011), Candido (2009). Of equal importance were the debates on the study of the present tense by Hobsbawm (2013), Koselleck (2014) and Ferreira (2002). The objective of this article was to demonstrate how Leonardo Padura’s narrative uses the feeling of reality to construct his characters who speak of his country, his generation and the present of Cuba. As a result of the research, we demonstrate how the literary source is essential for the study of the present time. We also reflect on how Leonardo Padura uses the present as a condition for his writing and how his characters, who belong to the same generation as the author, reveal the frustration of the socialist utopia that was not realized. The disappointing is expressed in the daily life and in the relationship of the protagonists with the city of Havana, showing the social and moral decadence in the present of Cuba.