Rodolfo Perez Valero
Reviews and Critiques
Amir Valle
(...) When I recently came across the stories collected in *A Man Knocks on the Door in the Rain*, I completely agreed with Paco Ignacio Taibo II when he said that Rodolfo Pérez Valero was the great short story writer of Latin American neo-noir. And indeed, that book possesses a unique mastery, a very visible personal style, and pieces that could easily be included in any anthology of short stories—the kind that are promoted without categorizing labels: *Gods and Orishas*, *Dear Subcomandante Marcos*, or *Rest in Peace, Agatha Christie*. But it was upon reading his most recent novel, *Havana-Madrid*, winner of the Voces del Chamamé International Novel Competition held in Asturias, that I became certain that Pérez Valero had already reached that pinnacle...
Waldo González López
When we met, back in 1966, we couldn't have imagined what we would later become, although I, the writer, was already taking poetry seriously at a young age (13 or 14), and shortly after—during my pre-university studies in Holguín—I was captivated by the drums (only to abandon them after the first class because of the overwhelming noise I couldn't stand). Later, at the National School of Theater (ENA), being an avid film buff adopted and nurtured by the Cuban Film Institute, I developed an equally brief enthusiasm for film directing, which even led me to discuss the subject with the then-young filmmaker Humberto Solas, who had just finished filming the short film Manuela and was preparing his feature film Lucía. It was during that time at the ENA that Rodolfo and I met.
Félix Luis Viera
For this novel, Cuban writer Rodolfo Pérez Valero (Havana, 1947) received First Prize in the IV Voces de Chamamé Novel Competition in Asturias, Spain. Set in 1980s Havana, the story unfolds as a love triangle, a recurring theme in fiction, and even more so in that this particular love triangle arises and develops between a mature man and a young woman, a university student. However, the narrative avoids cliché, thanks in part to the skill Pérez Valero demonstrated in his earlier work, almost all of which falls within the genre of crime fiction. It's worth noting that in 1973, his novel No es tiempo de ceremonias (It's Not a Time for Ceremonies) became a bestseller not only in Cuba but also in several Latin American countries.
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