Pedro Juan Gutiérrez
Pedro Juan Gutiérrez (born 27 January 1950, in Matanzas, Cuba) is a Cuban novelist. He grew up in Pinar del Río and began to work selling ice cream and newspapers when he was 11 years old. He was a soldier, swimming and kayak instructor, agricultural worker, technician in construction, technical designer, radio speaker, and journalist for 26 years.
Also recorded as Pedro Juan Gutierrez
Pedro Juan Gutiérrez
- Born
- 1950. · Matanzas.
- Nationality
- Cuba.
- Occupation
- writer, journalist, poet, painter and sculptor.
- Movements
- dirty realism and hyperrealism.
- Education
- University of Havana.
- Known for
- The King of Havana.
- Honours
- Premio Nacional de Periodismo.
- Languages
- Spanish.
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Pedro Juan Gutiérrez (born 27 January 1950, in Matanzas, Cuba) is a Cuban novelist. He grew up in Pinar del Río and began to work selling ice cream and newspapers when he was 11 years old. He was a soldier, swimming and kayak instructor, agricultural worker, technician in construction, technical designer, radio speaker, and journalist for 26 years.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Note VALÉORINE
No house-authored Note is published until its assertions and sources pass the VALÉORINE evidence contract. The documentary article remains available in full while that enrichment is being consolidated.
Documentary enrichment in progress · no unsupported statement published
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Pedro Juan Gutiérrez. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Evidence Panel
wikipedia incomplete · checked 25 September 2026
- Identity
- resolved
- Independent source families
- 0
- Admitted assertions
- 0
- Open conflicts
- 0
Authority files
wikidata · Q468942 · wikipedia · Pedro Juan Gutiérrez
In this article
Pedro Juan Gutiérrez and the Obscene Hyperrealism
Pedro Juan Gutiérrez and the Obscene Hyperrealism
The Italian researcher Gino Tramontana (Ph.D. in Latin-American Literature, Musician and Writer) believes that the poetics of Pedro Juan Gutiérrez should be considered not so clearly comparable to that of Charles Bukowski and entirely distant from the so-called dirty realism, believing that the most adequate definition is that of obscene hyperrealism. This theory was accepted and disseminated through a Doctoral thesis for the Universidad Complutense (Madrid), and arousing interest from international scientific journals such as Cultura Latinoamericana. Furthermore, to support this theory, in 2017 a conference entitled ¿Realismo sucio o hiperrealismo obsceno? was held at the Faculty of Letters of the Universidad Complutense en Madrid during which Gino Tramontana interviewed Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, pursuing the thesis that sees the Cuban author as completely distant from the literary movement defined as dirty realism.
Works
Works
Source:
Centro Havana cycle
Centro Havana cycle
Dirty Havana Trilogy (Trilogía sucia de La Habana, 1998) The King of Havana (El Rey de La Habana, 1999) Tropical Animal (Animal tropical, 2000) The Insatiable Spiderman (El insaciable hombre araña, 2002) Dog Meat (Carne de perro, 2003)
Poetry
Poetry
La realidad rugiendo (1987) Poesía (1988) Espléndidos peces plateados (1996) Fuego contra los herejes (1998) Non aver paura Lulù (Lulú la perdida y otros poemas de John Snake, 2006) Yo y una lujuriosa negra vieja (2006) Arrastrando hojas secas hacia la oscuridad (2012) La serpiente roja (2012) El último misterio de John Snake (2013) El sendero de las fieras (Yo y una lujuriosa negra vieja) 2014 La línea oscura. Poesía escogida (2015) Mediciones y sondeos
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 1 entries
1950
Pedro Juan Gutiérrez born at Matanzas.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Centro Habana.
Residences
Matanzas.
Birth place
Writings
Writings
He is a painter, sculptor and author of several poetry books. He came to Centro Habana, a dilapidated part of the capital, when he was 37 and was astonished by the level of violence but also by the energy of the people who lived there. He is the author of Dirty Havana Trilogy, King of Havana, Tropical Animal (winner of Spain's Alfonso Garcia Ramos Prize in 2000), The Insatiable Spiderman, Dog Meat (winner of Italy's Narrativa Sur del Mundo Prize), Snake's Nest (winner of the Prix des Amériques Insulaires et de la Guyane in 2008), Our GG in Havana, and the short stories of Melancholy of Lions. Dirty Havana Trilogy, Tropical Animal and The Insatiable Spiderman have been translated to English. Since 1994, he has written 10 prose books and five books of poetry. In 2007, he published Corazón Mestizo, a Cuban travel book.
Called a master of "Cuban dirty realism," like Zoé Valdés and Fernando Velázquez Medina, he tells the stories of the Cuban underclass in a direct, visceral style. His books describe contemporary Cuba from his semiautobiographical perspective as a disillusioned journalist. His books are typically gritty, tragicomic accounts of himself and his countrymen hustling for money, searching for pleasure and happiness, and struggling in desperate situations. He makes heavy use of irony. His stories illustrate the difficulty of achieving self-sufficiency and contentment in a dysfunctional and poverty-stricken society with a paternalistic government. His narrative voice is skeptical, intellectual, humorous, crass, sardonic, and bluntly frank. His literary persona is chiefly concerned with escaping poverty. However, efforts are rarely successful, and much of his time is spent escaping misery through sex and his preferred vices of rum, cigars and marijuana. Dirty Havana Trilogy (Trilogía sucia de La Habana) (1998) is his best known work. It is set during the economic depression in Cuba in the early to mid-1990s. Its first two parts, "Anclado en la tierra de nadie" ("Anchored in No-man's Land") and "Nada que hacer" ("Nothing to Do"), follow the picaresque adventures of a protagonist, who, like the author, is a one-time journalist called Pedro Juan. He struggles with loneliness, claustrophobia and alcoholism. The third part, "Sabor a mí" ("Essence of Me"), is a collection of short stories in which Pedro Juan appears only intermittently. Despite his grim depiction of Cuban life, his writing stresses his overriding love for Cuban culture. He frequently praises Cuban music, resourcefulness, and joie de vivre. He writes scornfully of people who avoid risk and self-expression in exchange for smothering safety and boredom-inducing banality.
Other books
Other books
The Snake's Nest (El nido de la serpiente: Memorias del hijo del heladero, 2003) Our GG in Havana (Nuestro GG en La Habana, 2005) Melancholy of Lions (Melancolía de los leones, 2002) Fabian and the Chaos (Fabian y el caos, 2016) Cuentos de La Habana Vieja (1997) Polizón a bordo (1990) Diálogo con mi sombra: Sobre el oficio de escritor (2013) Viejo Loco.cuentos. (2014) Estoico y frugal. (2019)
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q468942: Pedro Juan GutiérrezWikimedia Foundation
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolved
People, houses and institutions
Knowledge graph
People, houses and institutions
Teachers, collaborators, publishers and institutions recorded against this person, each on a stated basis.
Studied at
1- University of HavanaOrganisation
Established from a fact already recorded on a verified source.
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
38,661 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Pedro Geoffroy RivasAuthor
- Pedro Guerra CabreraAuthor
- Pedro Henríquez UreñaAuthor
- Pedro I of BrazilAuthor
- Pedro Laín EntralgoAuthor
- Pedro Luis BoitelAuthor
- Pedro Malón de ChaideAuthor
- Pedro Mariño de LoberaAuthor
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.