Contributions by Ernesto Hernández Busto
Ernesto Hernández Busto is an essayist and translator. He studied Mathematics in the former USSR and Literature and Philosophy in Havana. He emigrated from Cuba in 1991 and lived nine years in Mexico City, where he was a frequent contributor to Vuelta and other Mexican literary magazines, and received several grants and awards for his translations. In 1999 he moved to Barcelona, where he works as a translator, editor, and journalist. His publications include Perfiles derechos: Fisonomías del escritor reaccionario (Premio de Ensayo Casa de América, 2004) and Inventario de saldos: Apuntes sobre literatura cubana (2005), as well as work in several anthologies and translations from French, Russian, Portuguese and Italian. In 2006 he started a blog on Cuban affairs, for which he still writes: www.penultimosdias.com. His next book, La ruta natural, will be published by Vaso Roto in May 2015.
Among the Dead
Ernesto Hernández Busto
translated by Heather Cleary
The future is always a lie. We have too much influence over it.
— Elias Canetti
I.
It all began in September of 1991, when a friend (let’s call him I.) showed up at my place with the news that we’d be able to leave the country a few days later. I vaguely recall that we celebrated (despite the superstition about doing so in advance) and then went for a deliberately nostalgic walk around the city. I realize now that I don’t have a clear memory of that last stroll, of where we were, exactly, as though all that premeditation had generated the opposite effect: an overly illuminated screen on which we could barely make out blurred figures and places.
In another country, our departure would not have been anything special. In … Read More »
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