Lucía Puenzo

GRANTA 113: THE BEST OF YOUNG SPANISH-LANGUAGE NOVELISTS

Lucía Puenzo’s dark and sexy story ‘Cohiba’ is set in Havana, and the title character is a mysterious young professor who behaves outrageously from the first scene on. The other central character is known only as the Brasilera, the mythical Brazilian seductress, who can hypnotise men by batting her lashes at them. When she meets Cohiba, she falls hard, and the Argentine narrator – a foreigner among foreigners – is powerless to stop it. The narrator has the same distance from the dangerous couple as she has from Cuba, with its slums and its dancing: she is an acute observer, but always an observer. She can be touched and affected and even burned by a cigar in a crowded club, but she can’t intervene.

The immensely talented Puenzo is also a filmmaker, and the story is fast-paced and lush. It moves through the heat and the crush of Havana in a sex-laced, smoky haze. The characters losing and finding each other again, and Puenzo pulls you along with them toward the shock of the ending – you just have to hold on for the ride. – Maile Meloy, Best Young American Novelist 2007

– Read Lucía Puenzo’s ‘Cohiba’.

Each of the Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists answered a questionnaire on their influences and the role of the writer in public life.

Name the five writers you most admire at the moment (any period, language or genre).

Nabokov, Cheever, Borges, Mishima, Bizzio.

Have you published literary criticism?

No.

Which languages do you read in?

Spanish, English, French and Portugese.

Do you have your own web page, or blog?

No.

Is your fiction your sole source of income? If not, what else do you live off?

I’m a screen-writer and director. I write my own films, and films for other directors.

Should writers play a role in public life beyond the publication of their work? If so, in what way?

Writers can exert influence on public life by publishing their work. But it’s not an obligation – it’s also possible to write simply for the pleasure of it.

– Read Lucía Puenzo’s ‘Cohiba’ now. Back to main page