Reinaldo Arenas

The image of the 'implicit author' projected in the fictional universes of Reinaldo Arenas' literary works is distinctively dual in nature. The texts written in Cuba when the author suffered ostracism and prosecution by the Castro regime construct the image of a boundless irreverent marginal humorous tragic homosexual Arenas. These Cuban texts also reflect the image of an author who opposed and subverted not only the political system introduced on the island by the Revolution but also the moral values sustained by the Judeo-Christian tradition which Arenas considered both perverse and oppressive. The author's literary image is therefore constructed around the concept of political and sexual dissidence.