News stories by Leonardo Padura Fuentes, page 2

The world has deteriorated to the point that the images from Blade Runner amaze us less and frighten us more because we know how close we are to living on a planet similar to the one shown in the film, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages.

This year's theme for the forum of the Literary Chiasso festival in the enchanting Swiss town was "nostalgia for the future", a subject that revealed with striking clarity the worries of thinking people today, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages.

Before an end of the US embargo of Cuba became even remotely conceivable, certain major international developments had to take place: the profound political shift in Latin America, the moving election of the first black president of the United States (a man, moreover, committed to change in its widest sense), and the financial and economic cataclysm that has shaken the capitalist system to its roots, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages.

Cubans are placing their hopes not in the G7 or G20 meetings, or in possible crisis-driven modifications of the global capitalist system, but rather in the social and economic changes announced by the government two years ago, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages.