The renowned Cuban writer Edmundo Desnoes, author of the novel Memories of underdevelopment (1966), died at the age of 93 in the United States, the Hannah Arendt International Institute of Artivism (INSTAR) reported this Wednesday.
In a post on his Facebook page, INSTAR considered Desnoes, born on October 2, 1930 in Havana, to be one of the best writers of his generation.
A leading figure in the Cuban intellectual sphere of the 1960s, he is known primarily for his influential novel Memories of underdevelopment (1966), which served as the basis for the acclaimed Cuban film of the same name directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.
The fiction feature film, where Desnoes was a screenwriter with Gutiérrez Alea, had its premiere in Havana on August 19, 1968 and has been classified as the best Ibero-American film of the 20th century.
The Cubaactores portal published on Facebook that “his departure leaves an irreplaceable void in Cuban literature and cinema” and mentions that “his work, Memories of Underdevelopmentnot only had a profound impact on Cuban narrative” but “also became a pillar of cinema.”
Edmundo Desnoes is the author of works such as No problem (1961), The Cataclysm (1965) and essays such as “Lam: blue and black” (1963), “Point of view” (1967) and “To see you better, Latin America” (1972).
In 1979 the writer went into exile and settled in New York, United States.
His departure marked a significant change in the career of the writer, who continued to contribute to Cuban literature from outside the island.
After leaving Cuba he published the anthology The Devices in the Flower: Cuba, literature since the revolution (1981).
Many years later it came out Development memoriesin which “for the first time the protagonist is simply called Edmundo, and behaves in a way suspiciously similar to what one might imagine in Desnoes himself,” says critic Alejandro Luque, who defines the Cuban author as a “voyeur of the century”.
Miguel Coyula, filmmaker who directed the novel Development memories (continuation of Memories of underdevelopment) to the big screen in 2010, expressed his condolences to Desnoes’ family through social media.
In 2003, Desnoes returned to Cuba to serve on the jury for the prestigious Casa de las Américas Literary Prize, demonstrating his continued connection to the island’s culture and literature.
In a fragment of Memories of underdevelopment can be read: “They are all deluded. The opposition, because they live convinced that they will easily recover their comfortable ignorance; the Revolution, because they believe they can get this country out of underdevelopment…”
