Cuban Academy of the Language Awards the Novel Chérie

May 22, 2024

The Academia Cubana de la Lengua granted its annual prize for 2024 to the novel Chérie, authored by Dazra Novak, published the previous year by Ediciones Unión, the publishing house of the Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (Uneac).

The institution awarding the honor highlighted the lighthearted and subtle manner of the imaginary biography about a real person, which is also an essay, about perspective and a profound investigation into human and artistic freedom.

The work, which also won the Ítalo Calvino Prize in 2021, approaches the life and work of a contemporary visual artist, Rocío García, where the essential weight is determined not by the succession of verifiable facts in the chronology of her existence, but by the deciphering of her artistic work, according to the poet, essayist, art critic, literary researcher and narrator, Roberto Méndez.

For his part, the narrator, critic and essayist Jesús David Curbelo, said that "Chérie does not speak of love in the conventional sense, but of that which transcends the flesh and transforms itself into love of knowledge, through one of the most difficult paths to achieve it, which is art."

Other critical voices that have addressed the novel (Cira Romero, Marilyn Bobes) prioritize the perspective on the socio-political aspects of female empowerment, the scrutinizing discourse on the rigors of the country's reality during the years of the so-called Special Period, the questioning of machismo and homophobia prejudices, and, furthermore, it abounds in the sober use of realism resources to tell a story full of nuances and masks. Dazra Novak is the pen name of Mairely Ramón, a writer, journalist, photographer, translator, screenwriter and director of the Centro de Formación Literaria Onelio Jorge Cardoso for the last four years, who, when referring to the aforementioned award-winning novel, highlighted to the Cubaperiodista website that her text was an exercise in restraint that was quite difficult.

"Perhaps that's why it took me longer than the previous one and I spent three years waking up early. You lose a lot of freedom in this type of novels, because sometimes the character wants to go another way, but you have to respect the facts of reality and, of course, take care of the flesh-and-blood person, who in this case is a very well-known public figure. But I think that also helped with the formal part, it demanded more discipline from me, it posed more challenges for me. Luckily, I really like challenges."

"I suppose that the concerns I've carried since my youth helped me. I always say that I started with poetry; but no, actually I started with painting, with drawing. I love drawing, I used to draw hands, but I failed with faces, which made me abandon the idea of presenting myself at the Academia de Bellas Artes San Alejandro. Actually, painting remained in me; I can spend a lot of time looking at the same painting and if I return to it, every time I see more things, I feel more things. I suppose that's where the painter I could have been is speaking," concluded the author of Chérie, a volume that helps, through literature and thought, to build identity.