Havana was a city where nothing seemed to change, except the people who came and went in the natural course of life. A city as anchored in the needles of time, as subject to the honeyed cadence of its traditional music. And there Juan Del Monte moved like a fish in water, with his everlasting concerts at the Buena Vista cafe.
Don Fuego, named for his ability to turn on the clientele with his sweet and deep voice, discovers one day that the city suddenly seems determined to change, to stop being always the same, to stop keeping time trapped between their houses colonial, its cellars canteens and its vehicles of the twentieth century.
Everything happens slowly in Havana, even sadness and despair. Don Fuego is displaced to the streets, with no new opportunities to sing except for his new companions in misery.
Until he meets Mayensi. Don Fuego knows he is old, more than ever now that he is disowned on the street. But Mayensi is a young girl who awakens him from his lethargy caused by circumstances. The girl looks for an opportunity and he wants to help her. Juan del Monte feels his fire reborn again ...
But Mayensi has its particular edges, the recesses where it houses the secrets of its wandering personality. She and Don Fuego will lead us through the cobbled streets of Havana, between the light of the Caribbean and the shadows of a Cuba in transition. A story of dreams and longings, of contrasts between the feeling of a vitalist music and the shadows of some inhabitants who drown their sadness under the clear blue waters of the ocean.
You can buy the book God does not live in Havana, the new novel by the Algerian writer with the pseudonym Yasmina Khadra, here:
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