Intimacy, Extimacy and Subjectivation in Living l’Havana, by Ferran Torrent

Living l’Havana (1999) is one of Ferran Torrent’s lesser-known works. In terms of its genre, the length of the narrative makes it into a short novel or a very long short story; its style is descriptive and conversational, and its location is mainly limited to the seats of an intercontinental flight from Valencia to Havana, with a short final section in the city of Havana itself. For these reasons, the book has been variously labelled as “un libro inusual en su trayectoria” (Obiols, 1999) and “un ensayo” (Casa del Libro,,1999b). It has also been classified as an example of travel literature and, whithin that category, as “un manual habanero para 'el turista que lleva dólares'” (Obiols, 1999). Its use of frank and colourful language and its exposure of intimate feelings and details with no apparent filters links it to the anti-literary, anti-normative and anti-rhetorical style of Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s 1967 ground-breaking novel Tres tristes tigres (1964) — a work about three men who spend the night exploring what Havana has to offer.