Pedro Juan’s dirty Havana

Pedro Juan
kindly answered our questions while staying in Colombia for some days, out of
his beloved city. "I always
have a nice relationship with journalists. I was one for 26 years, and I know
how agonizing this job can be, but also how rewarding in other occasions", he recalls.

When you
published Dirty Havana Trilogy, in 1998, you recognised that it was a very hard
time in your life, very depressing, almost with suicidal tendencies. What do
you feel now when you look back on that period?

I try to
forget the past and not to be afraid of what the future will bring. I just try
to enjoy the moment, be calmer.

That book
has a high degree of autobiography, hasn’t it?

Yes, it is
almost an autobiography, but not totally. I think that many readers, after the
second time they go through my works, start to understand that the real “leit
motiv” of my books is poverty more than sex.

Your books
have a very aggressive style. There are ideas poured against almost everything
in politics, philosophy, religion… How are they received in Cuba?

Well, they
are not received well, nor badly. The point is actually that they are not
published here. There are only some selected titles that circulate with a small
number of copies. But I think that the new generation, young people with no
prejudices, like them very much. Many times they circulate from hand to hand.

I see some
features in your work that reminds me of Guillermo Cabrera Infante´s
masterpiece Infante's Inferno. Have you read that book?

No, I have
never read that book. In Cuba
you cannot find his works. As simple as that. If he would have won the Nobel
Prize, no Cuban would have known about it. When he died, nobody even published
a short article in the press. But I like very much his book Three Trapped
Tigers.

What
contemporary authors do you read?

I am
interested in Richard Ford, Carver, Houllebeck, Guillermo Arriaga,
Fernando Vallejo and some others.

You have
worked in many different jobs, met many people and gone through many experiences.
How do you face life when you get up every morning?

I learn new
things every day, I am like a child. I still get amazed about many things and I
try to understand them better. Now for example in Colombia I was carrying out a poll
about silicone implants. It has become very popular here among women, they do
it everywhere, in their tits, lips, ass, and cheeks. It is fascinating to hear
what they have to tell.

{mosimage}Going
through your work, we can appreciate that you must have had many experiences
and success with women. Have you found often real love, or has it been more
about frantic sex like in your books?

I have had
sex with more than two thousand women in my life. A bit excessive maybe. Real
love…only with five or six… and I feel very bad when everything is over. A female
Finnish journalist, whose name I do not remember now, interviewed me in La
Havana not long time ago. She was very friendly. She tried to link all this
behaviour to former psychological problems with my mother and father.

Would you be
able to live in another place, different from Havana?

Moving to
somewhere else? No, never! Well, maybe Spain. I would not like to live in
a place with a different language.

Have you
ever been in Finland? What do you know about this country?

Yes, I was
invited to Helsinki
and Lahti some
years ago. I gave a speech for two minutes, and the other five days I was
walking around the beautiful lakes and forests. I had a very nice romance with
a sweet Finnish woman who cultivated aromatic herbs, and I enjoyed sauna. Lahti was an
unforgettable experience. I would love to go back, but I suppose that warm
woman does not live there anymore, because the world is not a perfect place.

In your book
Tropical Animal (Etelän Peto), the main character also had a
romance with a Swedish woman: Agneta. Is the inspiration coming also from a
real story?

Yes. Agneta,
with another real name, really exists. She is a real woman. I lived in Sweden in 1999
for three months, and everything happened just as it is told in the book. She
felt betrayed at the beginning, but later, she understood that a writer is
always a bit of a “son of a bitch”, not always a nice human being, and she
accepts me the way I am. Publishing houses in Sweden, in revenge, do not publish
my books. {quotes}I suffer from censorship in Sweden, and I think that they are
really stupid{/quotes} because they are missing very good books that are already
published in twenty other countries.

What are the
future perspectives for Pedro Juan?

Like
everybody else: projects. The first one is to live a relaxed life, and have fun
whenever I am able to. Life is a great crazy adventure, funny,
unpredictable…  Time flies, and without realising
about it, we have become old, and we cannot fuck anymore, or drink, or smoke,
and the women look at us like if we were old grandpas. Shit, what a horror!