Habana Flash/ Havana Flash

Havana Flash is a travel book converted into fiction. Xavier Alcalá, a writer with an impressive literary trajectory, chooses to write about a trip in which he searches for the places in which his grandfather made his fortune. Fiction is so close to reality that some of the characters appear with their real name while others (the revolutionaries frustrated with Fidel) are carefully redrawn to hide their true identity as they could otherwise face severe punishment for providing the author with certain information. Ten years later, another writer with Cuban roots, Marcelino Fernández Mallo, revisits the visions of Xavier Alacalá and dedicates a preface and prologue in which he talks about the contemporary nature of the book’s message. Xavier Alcalá manages to construct the Cuban reality that flows from the present to the past and that seemingly gets lost in the chaos.