Severo secreto

Severo Sarduy was a hybrid of the various ethnic origins Spanish African and Chinese that comprise Cuban culture As impossible to pigeonhole as his roots would indicate Sarduy left Cuba to study in Paris in 1960 and never returned One of the leading lights of the NeoBaroque movement in literature his novel Cobra won the Medici Prize The Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid hosted a major retrospective of his paintings after his death from AIDS The husbandandwife tandem of Oneyda González and Gustavo Pérez They Would All Be Queens hail from the Cuban province of Camagüey where Sarduy was born Traveling from Havana to Miami and Paris they set out to unravel the mystery that was one of the islands most transgressive artists gaining unprecedented access to the Sarduy archives from his longtime companion François Wahl They succeed in their mission without violating the artists abiding enigma that is without betraying the essence of their subject A remarkable achievement