Martha Luisa Hernández Cadenas

A journey around my toilet. 

“Martha Luisa Hernández Cadenas’ writing is a toilet where sorrows, desires and broken dreams whirl in a psychedelic spiral when you flush the toilet. There they go, down the drain, on their way to the sea, where we readers wait, swimming, amazed by the beauty of the waste. What an experience.” –Sabina Urraca

Like art in its purest form, Pure Flash is a book that avoids any conventional order. Its pages contain variations, reflections and brief fictions that allow us to peek into the sacrosanct intimacy of life within the four walls of a toilet.

This ordinary and at the same time so strangely marginal space is the refuge where people weep over broken love affairs and irretrievable losses, the territory of purifying habits, of sex alone or in fleeting company, the backdrop for seductive selfies rehearsed at the onset of the night and crowned with vomiting at the end of it. Or it can be a death trap, as Marat and Agamemnon well found out.

Martha Luisa Hernández Cadenas’s lively prose gives a worthy account of the countless experiences lived out in toilets – hygienic, erotic, political and criminal, with just the right measure of irony, seriousness and melodrama.

“The bathrooms in this book have the faucets running, and the floor is flooded with heat, pain, horror, flesh.”—Sabina Urraca

“The writer stands out for her ability to tackle complex themes with a unique perspective, demonstrating a profound understanding of social and gender dynamics.” —Vogue

“The writing of Martha Luisa Hernández Cadenas is distinguished by her ability to capture human complexity and social tension.”—Infobae 

O

PEN Translates Award 2024

A grim underground portrait of today's Cuba, where young people struggle to shake off the vestiges of Castroism.

From Monday to Saturday, Mary is a young and talented artist who moves like a fish in water in the artistic, bohemian and fringe circles of Havana. But on Sundays, Mary becomes the sex toy of a high official of the regime. Her condition as a woman and artist, bisexual and alienated from Castroism, inevitably pushes her towards social exclusion, so that Mary begins to need a reason, almost a miracle, to persuade her not to abandon Cuba and never look back.

Featuring a host of unforgettable secondary characters – among which the most colourful and irreverent members of the Havana underground stand out – and with the powerful voice of the author, a key figure on the current Cuban countercultural scene, La puta y el hurón raises vitally important questions which a whole generation is finding more and more difficult to ignore: How to and why live in Havana under a regime that promotes class abuse and hatred, whether it be sexual or for reasons of gender identity, or the simple fact of thinking one’s own thoughts?

“Novel, epistolary narrative, poetry, essay and dramaturgy in a display of explosive theatricality.”  Babelia, El País

 “A novel written in the style of the spoken word, a recited style that lays the emphasis on repetition to provide rhythm and musicality. Revolving narration, water going down the drain, a foul, stagnant discourse, history suspended in time, a country without a future or a past.” Artes Hoy

“One of the great revelations of the season. [...] A political and tumultuous novel that portrays the patriarchal system of her country.” Infobae