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In 2002, while temporarily living in Europe (mostly Amsterdam), the poet Omar Pérez began writing in a notebook. His journey began as a short professional visit that shifted into something less defined after he fell in love. Eventually the notebook became
Cubanology, a book of days reflecting on three years of life at a remove from the island: "A memory of a flight, a journey, jour."
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Omar Pérez's books include CUBANOLOGY (2018),
Lingua Franca (2010);
Oíste hablar del gato de pelea? (1999, translated as DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE FIGHTING CAT? by Kristin Dykstra, 2010); and ALGO DE LO SAGRADO (1996, translated as SOMETHING OF THE SACRED by Kristin Dykstra and Robert Tejada, 2007). His translations include Italian-Cuban novelist Alba de Céspedes's
Nadie vuelve atrás (2003); and Shakespeare's
As You Like It (as
Como Les Guste, 2000). He received Cuba's Nicolás Guillén Prize for Poetry for
Crítica de la Razón Puta (2009) as well as its National Critics' Prize for his essay collection
La perseverancia de un hombre oscuro (2000). His work has also been featured in the anthology
The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry, A Bilingual Anthology (2009). Pérez was born and raised in Havana. He earned a degree in English at the University of Havana and studied Italian at the Universitá per Straniere di Siena. He has worked as a journalist for
El Caimán Barbudo, and as an editor for the magazine
La naranja dulce. A former member of the Cuban intellectual group Paideia, he edited the poetry magazine
Mantis in the '90s. Ordained as a Zen Buddhist monk, Pérez composes poems that engage languages, Zen, and political and cultural transcendence.
