Elaine Vilar Madruga believes that the world has been destroyed so much and so quickly after the pandemic that that is why we take refuge in horror books. The 37-year-old Cuban writer is the guest this week on What Are You Reading, EL PAÍS's book podcast, where she chats with Berna González Harbor about literature as a non-serious place of play. Both met within the framework of the Filuni International Book Fair, in Mexico. And he talks about his two great novels, The Sky of the Jungle and The Female Skin, mestizo and dazzling territory. Why this rise of gothic, fantasy or horror that brands like Mariana Enriquez, Samanta Schweblin or herself represent today? “Because we live in a very dystopian present and people look for a reflection of the world they see.” Above all: “Let literature not be anesthetized and blindfolded.” It also analyzes the situation of a Cuba trapped between two fires and empty of young people and voices. “The grandchildren of the future are not born there.”
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