Gustavo Eguren

Narrator, writer, prose writer, short story writer and literary researcher. Of Basque origin. He contributed to Cuban letters pages of excellent craftsmanship and exquisite sense of humor. Eguren is considered one of the main contemporary Cuban writers.

He was born in Nueva Gerona, Isla de Pinos (today Isla de la Juventud). Son of Basque immigrant parents. When he was only three years old he was taken by his family to Spain, where he remained until he was nine years old. He returned to Cuba in the midst of the great economic crisis in 1934 and began to write when he was fifteen years old.

He graduated with a degree in Letters from the Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza de Pinar del Río in 1944 and obtained his Doctor of Law degree from the Universidad de La Habana in 1950. Around that time he was part of the management of the Pinar del Río magazine and the Semanario Extra del Lunes. Before the triumph of the revolution he held various jobs. He also worked in different occupations such as mailman, teacher, street vendor and radio and television scriptwriter.

The year 1959 found him as head of the Department of Pacts and Agreements of the Ministry of Labor. He had only published two short stories in national magazines and newspapers before that date.

Between 1960 and 1965 he was in India, Federal Republic of Germany, Finland and Belgium as a diplomat. Later, back in Cuba, he was appointed literary advisor to the presidency of the Consejo Nacional de Cultura in 1967 and national director of literature between 1968 and 1969.

Between 1969 and 1971 he was a literary researcher at the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí. In 1971 itself he returns to the Ministry of Foreign Relations where he is designated as charge d'affaires of Cuba in Belgium between 1971 and 1972. From this year on he worked on the editorial board of the magazine Unión and later was part of the executive of the Literature Section of the UNEAC.

Fully committed to the Revolution, he served as a diplomat and later worked in the Consejo Nacional de Cultura and in the UNEAC. His last literary work consisted of developing the leadership in the narrative editing of Ediciones UNION. For a long time, Eguren dedicated his attention to the development of young literary talents, grouped in workshops of the Brigada and the Asociación Hermanos Saíz and of the Ministry of Culture. His work also stands out for having been a juror in contests convoked by the UNEAC, the Consejo Nacional de Cultura, the CDR and the MINFAR.

Novels and Publications
La robla, which was his first novel, was published in 1967. This work has a certain autobiographical sense and tries to capture the Spanish atmosphere prior to the fall of King Alfonso XIII and the establishment of the Republic, all from the vision of an eight-year-old child.

La cal en las paredes was published in 1971 and was a book that according to the author himself, had been incubating for a long time and part of the idea of someone who tries, by all means, to isolate himself from the phenomenon of the Revolution, and from the chance fact of having to pass daily in front of a house, which once was a great mansion of Vedado, and which is now half-ruined, fruit of the turbulent times of the era. This text was written in one go in a month of leave that the author obtained while working at the Biblioteca Nacional.

Los lagartos no comen queso, is a book of short stories published in 1975 that provides a grotesque and at the same time humorous vision, (an aspect that never fails in Eguren's narratives) of life in Cuban capitalism before 1959, they are stories based, according to the author himself, on the strictest reality, elaborated with literary resources.

Las aventuras de Gaspar Pérez de Muela Quieta, published in 1982, is one of the few examples of picaresque literature in national narrative. This work, which according to the author was the one that gave him the most work, follows the classical mold of Spanish picaresque and specifically of El Buscón by Quevedo, and tells a story that takes place in the final years of the Batista dictatorship, giving the narrative the idea of a classical mold but updating itself according to the times in which the action develops.

La fidelísima Habana, which is published in 1986 and fruit of his years of research at the Biblioteca Nacional, considered a monumental and essential work for the study of the history of the country's capital, which in the manner of a collage reconstructs the history of the Villa de San Cristóbal de La Habana from its founding until the end of Spanish domination, taking as sources documents of the period such as acts of the cabildo, letters, official documents, testimonies of travelers, and providing information about how Habaneros lived throughout their lives, their customs, fashions, eating habits, colors, smells, social relationships, etc. It is said of this work that possibly there is no other of such rigor and documented love for the city.

Los papelillos de San Amiplín, which in 1997 Ediciones Unión publishes, a jewel of Creole humor, irony and satire. According to Arturo Arango, its prologue writer, humor in Gustavo transited over time from a "bilious humor" in La robla, Algo para la palidez and Una ventana para el regreso and En la cal de las paredes, to a "picaresque of classical root contaminated with the thick stroke of Cuban laughter" in Gaspar Pérez de Muela Quieta, and from there to a humor "undoubtedly bilious" in Los papelillos de San Amiplín.

Appearing in the Gaceta de Cuba since 1973 and later turned into a book, the "papelillos" came to be a collective amusement and according to Arturo himself in his aforementioned prologue: "the readers of San Amiplín who frequented the Unión de Escritores entertained ourselves by guessing the correspondences between Eguren's characters and those creatures who (like Gustavo himself) spent their hours wandering through hallways, gardens and rooms doing nothing but speaking in low voices and playing chess. Now that the papers have grown, (he refers to the published text), those correspondences also fade away. Rather than tangible characters, here there are models of conduct".

Pepe was another novel that Gustavo wrote and published in 1998, but no longer with the intention of imitating the classical picaresque of Quevedo, now the rogue was another, a contemporary one, lacking scruples and with no ethics, who knew how to take advantage of the cracks in socialism under construction to profit from gratuities, opportunities and possibilities, to prosper with them and live an easy life. Perhaps a precedent of today's "fighters".

Gustavo also has the following titles published: Algo para la palidez y una ventana para el regreso, Alguien llama a la puerta, La espada y la pared, El aire entre los dedos, and La televisión acaba con todo.

De sombras y apariencias, his last novel, published by Ediciones Unión in 2002 is a monument of contemporary Cuban literature. To this novel, the author himself added at the end "De furias y penas, sombras y apariencias"]] and below, in parentheses: "More than a novel, scherzo, divertimento".