Wendy Guerra

A novel that explores the fascinating figure of Coco Chanel with all her lights and shadows.

When her parents die, Simone takes charge of the family tailoring business in a small provincial French town and soon makes a name for herself thanks to her talent with the needle and thread and the ground-breaking originality of her designs. One day, a small, energetic woman who runs a hat shop in Paris walks into her humble seamstress’s workshop. Her name is Gabrielle Chanel and she is full of innovative ideas. She asks Simone to become her business partner.

The doors to the European high society of the early 20th century are opened to Simone and she rubs shoulders with the aristocrats, artists and famous names of her time in the capital of the world. Gabrielle does not seem out of place among them – she moves like a fish in water among the rich and the bons vivants, but she is hiding a complicated past full of light and shadows. With their haute couture designs, Simone and Gabrielle together revolutionise fashion in France and around the world, liberating women through the way they dress. Their success, however, cannot save them from life’s heavy blows: two wars, failed love affairs, irreplaceable losses and a betrayal that will forever shape the destiny of the two women and the mark they will leave – visible or despicably erased – on the history of a turbulent century.

"The most literary and stylistically accomplished of her published works." —Leonardo Padura, El País

"Guerra’s prose is imbued with sensoriality: La costurera de Chanel smells of incense and lavender, echoes with Chopin’s waltzes and the Atlantic breeze, and its texture is as enveloping as fine tweed. In its pages, fashion is both a language and a trench, a form of resistance against imposed norms. Between luxury and war, ambition and memory, the novel reminds us that true elegance is not in the dresses but in the determination of those who dare to change the rules."—Carmen Gómez Moreno, El Generacional

"Guerra’s novel arrives at a time when there seems to be a growing interest in revisiting the great names of haute couture." —La Razón

“Lyrical and potent... Guerra’s captivating tale is an intriguing depiction of art amid corruption, and a reminder of the power in a singular voice.”—Publishers Weekly, on Revolution Sunday

“A powerful novel of love and loss, memory and possibility.” —The New York Times, on Everyone Leaves

“A beautifully written, absorbing tale of exile, love, and identity.”—Kirkus Reviews, on Everyone Leaves 

Wendy Guerra’s greatest work on the world of the Cuban resistance.

The figure of the charismatic mercenary who narrates this story is a based on a real man with the pseudonym of Adrián Falcón, even though over the years he used others like El Parse, Garfio, Strelkinov…. Both tender and devilish. Falcón is now sixty-something years and with a peculiar sense of humour he has managed to survive his complicated life. He was hunted in the US and other Latin American countries for terrorism, was a key figure in notorious cases like Iran-Contra scandal, and he operated within Colombian cartels to finance his counter-revolutionary actions. Considering himself a ‘freedom fighter’, he acted against the orders of the Soviet Union, the Sandinistas and Fidel Castro.

Even though at one point he was an FBI target, he would spend his final days as a fighter as a CIA mercenary and becomes disillusioned on all fronts. This disenchantment leads him to decide to fight on his own behalf, and he finds an ally in Valentina, a woman he meets in Paris and with whom he forms a mutually beneficial relationship with; in her own way, she is also a mercenary who survived.

This work offers a reference point for those who wonder about the enemies of the left faced in Latin America. It is the fruit of interviews with Falcón and the review of archives made by Wendy Guerra, daughter of the guerrillero idealism who jumped over the wall in order to take a look from the other side.

“This book showcases Wendy Guerra in all her splendor: lyrical, lighthearted, hilarious, hearbreaking and totally inimitable.” Alejandro Zambra, author

Cleo, a young writer from Havana, travels to Spain to receive a poetry award and to sign the publication of her book in several languages. Back in Cuba, with her success under her arm, she realizes that she has become an author under suspicion. She begins to perceive that she is continuously watched, even in the privacy of her bed, and discovers to her horror that she suddenly cannot trust anyone, not even her closest friends. In her attempts to clarify her situation, Cleo learns of an unusual fact: her real father may have been clandestinely executed by Castroism, accused of espionage. The investigation of this dark episode from the past allows Cleo to reconstruct her own identity, dissolved in the paranoia of a government obstinate in depriving her of the truth and in condemning whoever writes about her.

“Her books powerfully portray the uncomfortable grandchildren of the revolution. A generation facing the same 'forbidden’ destiny as their predecessors, experiencing the forbidden in ways that are lighter, but which cause more suffering as well.“ L. Santiago Méndez Alpízar, El País

“With this novel Wendy Guerra confirms her status as one of the most perspicacious, sophisticated and interesting Latin American writers working today.” Francisco Martínez Bouzas, Brújulas y Espirales 

“With a prose that isa s poetica as it is volcanic, the Caribbean writer offers a living diary of a woman who is isolated on her own island, as well as a testimony of a crucial moment of change in the history of a country that the protagonist can’t abandon." El Nacional

Nirvana del Risco is the first black Cuban heroine who acts in an open, stark and fearless way towards what many hide through prejudice: bisexuality, racism, politics, fear and close contact with the enemy. Daughter of the 1960s and a rebellious Havana women leader in the 2000s, she cuts a path to the prohibited and sacred, thus revealing hidden prescriptions deep within Afro Cuban culture.

Es 1922. Anaïs Nin viaja a Cuba tras el rastro de un padre ausente e idealizado, en busca de su familia. Tiene 19 años y se ha comprometido con Hugo Guiler, un rico banquero cuyos padres se oponen a que su hijo se case con una latina católica y morena. Ella escribe el diario por el que será conocida y Wendy Guerra imagina lo que Anaïs pudo sentir.

A lush, sensuous, and original tale of family, love, and history, set against the backdrop of the Cuban Revolution and its aftermath.

Nadia Guerra’s mother, Albis Torres, left when Nadia was just ten years old. Growing up, the proponents of revolution promised a better future. Now that she’s an adult, Nadia finds that life in Havana hasn’t quite matched its promise; instead it has stifled her rebellious and artistic desires. Each night she DJs a radio show government censors block from broadcasting. Frustrated, Nadia finds hope and a way out when she wins a scholarship to study in Russia. 

Leaving Cuba offers her the chance to find her long lost mother and her real father. But as she embarks on a journey east, Nadia soon begins to question everything she thought she knew and understood about her past.

As Nadia discovers more about her family, her fate becomes entwined with that of Celia Sanchez, an icon of the Cuban Revolution—a resistance fighter, ingenious spy, and the rumored lover of Fidel Castro. A tale of revolutionary ideals and promise, Celia’s story interweaves with Nadia’s search for meaning, and eventually reveals secrets Nadia could never have dreamed.

“A revelatory tale of the Cuban Revolution’s impact on a family... Guerra holds the reader’s attention by evoking Cuba’s political tempest in Havana’s humid, salty air. It adds up to an effectively moody, intimate story.” Publisher's Weekly

“In Wendy Guerra’s writing, Cuba is a character, a cosmic force, the loneliest place, the only place. [...] Guerra’s own unpredictable book is haunting, complicated, [and] linguistically beautiful.” The New York Times

“Moving around in time and space, I Was Never the First Lady juxtaposes decades’ worth of Cuban history with the story of a mother and daughter, each struggling to create art.” Words Without Borders 

“A multilayered novel...Nadia's, her mother's, and Celia's stories provide fascinating insights into the female dimension of an infamously macho revolution.” Booklist

“This is Wendy Guerra at her best. I Was Never The First Lady is a beautiful, disturbing, intimately-told novel about the existential orphanhood of women in a Cuba where Fidel’s Castro’s revolution has upended notions of family, individual identity and national belonging. Unforgettable.”  Jon Lee Anderson

“Guerra’s novel is a grand if bittersweet valentine to Cuba.” Kirkus Reviews

“[Guerra is] a staggering talent.” Oprah.com

An intimate look at Cuba.

"I don't know when I decided to stop being a child. I paid a very high price, growing up alone while everyone left he island. They abandoned me, one by one; now I can't behave like a regular woman, I'm out of this world. The tools they gave me no longer work, I take shelter in my Diary and I'm only com­fortable and normal between its pages. There I've always been an adult; I pretended to be a child, but it wasn't true: too grown-up for the Diary, too much of a girl for real life."

From the age of eight to twenty years old, Nieve Guerra takes refuge in the pages of her diary, writing down her story, the story of her survival during her childhood and teenage years in contemporary Cuba. 

As a child, Nieve lives with her hippy mother and her mother's boyfriend, a Swedish nuclear engineer that shocks the community by practicing nudism, until her biological father wins custody of her. From then on, Nieve finds herself forced to live under the bru­tal control of an alcoholic father that forgets to feed her or take her to school, and forces her to be a witness to his erotic adventures. As a teenager, Nieve goes to the compulsory military school. Later she attends art school and becomes part of the island's artistic and intellectual circle, where the ruling trend is No Love - don't fall in love - don't kiss, don't own another person's feelings. But Nieve can't help falling in love with Osvaldo, a promising artist with whom she lives a stormy and passionate love story.

The author’s first poetry book published outside of Cuba deals with insularity, loss, feelings of love, and the longing for fulfilment. She opens with a very incisive quotation in which Anaïs Nin recounts a visit to a famous publisher who, when returning her manuscript, throws it on the table and says ‘Madam, do please remove your underwear from here’.

“La poesía es mi protección mágica, cuando tengo mucho miedo recito los poetas de mi madre, en los hospitales y en las aduanas, en los vuelos intercontinentales cuando hay mal tiempo recito poemas que son mis compañeros de vida y de viaje. No tengo familia y creo que los poetas que yo amo son todo lo que tengo." Wendy Guerra.

Translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson and Esperanza Hope Snyder.

Longlisted for the 2024 National Award Translation in Poetry in the U.S..

Imbued with a sensuality reminiscent of the work of Anaïs Nin, Wendy Guerra’s Delicates takes readers on an exhilarating journey through the cities of love, where women leave their bodies ‘in the showers of men’, marking their territory ‘like animals in heat’, their panties ‘saturated with sand and a sidereal isolating odor’. Guerra’s shocking metaphors and images invite us to enter her gallery of striking and provoking poems where we witness a flight through the air from a thirty-fourth-story window and a woman’s pilgrimage to the salt flats ‘to taste the pink in stones’ on her lover’s behalf. Guerra’s relationship with her native Cuba—much like her relationships with men—is complex and multilayered. Her work confronts the realities of a political system that doesn’t celebrate artistic freedom. Here we have a new way of looking at a woman, an artist, a country, and the colonizers of that country. In these music-infused poems, Guerra shares with us her hard-won truths.

Selected by the New York Times in its Newly Published Poetry section. 

‘Guerra’s highly sensual poetry explores how people know the world by means of their bodies, and just why and how it becomes the guiding epistemology of one’s life, although it is dangerous to deliberately practice the breakdown of barriers between oneself and others.’ Susan Smith Nash, World Literature Today

‘[A] restless and provocative interrogation of power.’ Rebecca Morgan Frank, Literary Hub

‘The range of emotions and tones in Delicates speak to the comprehensiveness of Guerra’s poetic approach: a compelling book of longing and loss.’ Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions

‘Delicates aligns with a lineage of women writers in Cuba who wrote about female sexuality and the body. Guerra revels in what many women are told to keep secret. She writes with unabashed reclamation of the body and of pleasure. [. . .] Although many forces seek to silence and erase her voice from literature, Guerra rises triumphant in this collection.’ Laura Villareal, Free State Review 

‘Haunting images drift up from every page of this collection in which Carlson and Snyder have captured the music of Guerra’s words and worlds — her delicates, if you will. This is a book that will not rest easily on the shelf; it does not deserve to gather dust. Instead, leave Delicates on your bedside table to pick up time and time again. Allow its words to caress you in your dreams.’ W. Luther Jett, Washington Independent Review of Books