“Innovation and Tradition” is the subtitle of the book that Raymond D. Souza devotes to the Cuban novel and three of its contemporary writers: Alejo Carpentier, José Lezama Lima and Guillermo Cabrera Infante. The author makes a study of the development of the traditional Cuban novel since approximately 1850 and tries to discover the origins of the forces which have made the formal transformations of this literary genre possible.
Souza thinks that “the development of a novelistic tradition is closely related to the evolution of a national awareness and the creation of a sense of national identity” (p. 4). In order to prove his thesis he reviews the Cuban novel of the nineteenth century. Beginning with the Romantic movement, he demonstrates that the structure of this novel supports the concept that literature is the expression of society and, in some way, its value as a work of art is closely associated with its sociological content.
Therefore, Souza believes that the 1920s represent a critical period in the history of this genre and prepare the beginning of forms and a sense of reality that distinguish the contemporary Cuban novel from the traditional. This process ends with Carpentier, Lezama Lima and Cabrera Infante. The author has selected them in accordance with three principles: “The choice of the three writers whose works are studied in detail was based primarily on the artistic quality of their works. However, two other important considerations entered into the choice: (1) each of the three novelists has attracted an extensive and varied audience, and (2) the works of each one exemplify some important trend or tendency in the contemporary novel” (p. vii). After analyzing their most representative works, Souza concludes that they “reveal a preoccupation with the roles that chaos and order play in human existence” (p. 105). This problem is described and interpreted in different ways by each author; however, the paths opened by Carpentier, Lezama Lima, and Cabrera Infante lead, according to Souza, to the best view of the panorama of contemporary Cuban fiction.
