“Mecánica popular, a collection of seventeen stories full of vitality, rawness, viscerality, and sex. Seventeen stories that function as a succession of Cuban stamps. A portrait of life on the island throughout the course of three decades, from the 50s to the 70s of the previous century, in three privileged locations: Matanzas, Pinar del Río, and Havana. Additionally, this is a collection of stories that could also be read as a kind of open or episodic novel, because there are characters who reappear in the stories that follow. One in particular, Carlitos, we meet as a kid and then reencounter once he has become a recruit and construction worker who wants to study Architecture and dreams of becoming a journalist.”

“Pedro Juan Gutiérrez returns to bookstores with Mecánica popular, a collection of stories in which he returns to his childhood through a series of characters that make up a fresco of Cuba in the 50s and 60s. Less lustful and stark but more mature and reflective, the Pedro Juan Gutiérrez we encounter here is closer to Chekhov than to the title of ‘Caribbean Bukowski’ that critics bestowed upon him decades ago.”

“A real homage to the freedom of the individual where discourse has been displaced by life.”