Diamonds for the Reader

Diamonds for the Duke is a novel with the hallmark of the Editorial Politica and was launched in the last International Book Fair 2014 held from February to March. It contributed to a better view of the liberation war in Angola.

The function key of historical fiction retelling –when we understand there is a plot of actions that really did not happened, which are included in the text with others that really did-, is the organization of the fiction with the reality.

When it is efficient, the reader could get inside an adventure – he knows is full of imagination of the writer- at the same time he can include details, about the events that took part in History.

If one or the other sequences –the real and the fiction ones take place- are also told, the first one with serialized documentation, and the second with attractive verisimilitude, then we can talk of a work that contributes with its own light to the knowledge and spirituality.

In my opinion it happens in Diamonds for the Duke, a novel written by J. Hernandez launched by Editorial Politica in the International Book Fair in Cuba 2014.

The robbery of a great quantity of precious stones from a diamond’s mine in Angola is the tip of the thread that knitted a dense comings and goings.

The precious cargo of diamonds is robbed once and many times by enemies among them for ambitious purposes that even involved them in military conflicts before and after the proclamation of Independence of Angola by the liberation forces of that country, supported by Cuban internationalist combatants, in a bloody struggle against the colonial Portuguese reaction armed troops in Angola and the neighboring countries from Zaire and South Africa.

J.Hernandez –Jorge Luis Garcia Hernandez; Havana, 1945; retired lieutenant colonel of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), chemistry engineer- had already demonstrated his talent in fiction and historical reality with his novels Los fantasmas del don (Verde Olivo Editorial, 2007), Los libros de Glorian (Editorial Extramuros, 2010) and Proyecto Sicklemia-E (Editorial Capital San Luis, 2011).

With Diamonds for the Duke, he leads us in a drama plot in crescendo, in the middle of a military conflict that takes place between oppressive injustice and the avenging heroism -while the precious load goes from one criminal to another, until an unusual end, where some of these jewelries have been definitely left in the soul of the reader.