Desire, betrayal, malice and acidity permeate these explosive pages, with lively texts that provoke, disturb and make you laugh – just like in The Paediatrician, whose protagonist is the epitome of this scathing aspect of the writer‘s work. I Deny Everything. Sudden Fictions (“Nego tudo. Ficções súbitas”) is both an aesthetic delight and a sophisticated exercise in literature by an experienced author, who plays with form in very short stories and challenges common sense, questioning any Manichaeism.
In a handmade, numbered edition restricted to friends, first published in 2005, I Deny Everything was, unbeknown to anyone, the genesis of what would become Andrea del Fuego‘s new oeuvre two decades later. A sui generis book, which on its twentieth anniversary gets this new version, revised and reworked in detail by del Fuego: half of the stories have been replaced, others rewritten, but the rebellious essence remains.

Although medicine was a natural choice for Cecília, following in the footsteps of her father, she does not match the image one expects of a paediatrician. A doctor who is not at all maternal, with little affection for children and zero patience for their mothers and fathers.
And yet she has a successful practice as a sought-after neonatologist. Gradually, however, she ends up losing ground to a humanist paediatrician, who works with doulas, midwives and accompanies home births. Even the obstetrician with whom she has always worked seems to prefer the humanist.

Cecília undertakes an obsessive dive into the universe of humanised childbirth and alternative medicine, despite being practices she deeply despises. In parallel, she has a relationship with a married man, whose son she treats professionally during his birth. And this child will awaken unexpected feelings and attitudes in her.
With caustic humour and deft, succinct prose, Andrea del Fuego presents in The Paediatrician (“A Pediatra”) an insightful look at human behaviour and key contemporary issues, such as ethics, empathy and the limits that can be easily crossed by those in a position of power.

In her new novel The Miniatures (“As miniaturas”), Andrea del Fuego plunges the reader into a highly original world made up of dreams and reality. In a mysterious building full of corridors, people are working, under strict regulations, as interpreters of dreams. One day, as he leads a boy through his dreams using plastic miniatures, an interpreter realizes the boy is the son of one of his other clients. Although not allowed to work with members of the same family, the interpreter doesn’t report it and gets more and more involved in the lives of mother and son. Once again the author captivates her readers with a profound and entertaining novel.

The Malaquias (“Os Malaquias”) is an intriguing, intelligent story of family ties and fate in a world where magic lives alongside reality: When their parents die after being struck by lightning, Nico, Antônio and Júlia are separated. While each one tries to make it on their own, they continue to look for each other. Nico stays behind on a coffee plantation, while Antônio and Júlia are sent to an orphanage. In time, Antônio joins Nico and his family and Júlia becomes a successful dressmaker. Then Nico decides to leave for new shores, where he is sure he will see his sister again. A captivating family saga enhanced by a fresh literary tone that skillfully combines scientific conciseness with magical elements.

The world is living through an epidemic caused by an unknown virus, the Bola. The virus has already killed many people, including the grandfather of Vitor, a super-smart thirteen-year-old boy, skinny, with pimples on his face, who lives alienated from the world in front of his computer. Because of Samara, with whom he is in love, the young man discovers a game on the internet, the Skull, and ends up joining the mysterious Crystal Skull Society (“Sociedade da Caveira de Cristal”). To advance in the game, Vitor has to leave the computer on, the internet connected, and to fall asleep, because the game continues in his dreams. Thus, all the players have the same dream and live the same adventure. But Vitor, Samara, and the smart Jorjao (who owns an internet cafe) realize that something is wrong in this story and that together they can save the world from Bola.

The author portrays Cuba’s society, the hopes and dreams of the generation which lived the days of the revolution and the young people who have grown up afterwards. There are those who engage in political life like the student leader Carlos in Las iniciales de la tierra (“The Initials of the Earth”), who experiences all the contradictions of revolutionary Cuba. There is the impossibility of realising the great dreams of freedom and justice cherished in the youth in Las palabras perdidas (“The lost Words”), where the young people’s passion for literature, love and pleasure is crushed and their ideals destroyed. And there are those who live in exile and return as visitors or suffer from nostalgic memories like Iris and Lidia who return to Cuba on a visit after long years of exile in La piel y la máscara (“The Skin and the Mask”). As exciting as a polit-thriller, as stimulating as an erotic novel, Díaz provides us with a vivid slice of Caribbean life and some deep insight into the current turmoil of Cuban society. In Dime algo sobre Cuba (“Tell me something about Cuba”) the dentist Stalin Martínez stays in the United States illegaly, in the end is broken by the inner turmoil produced by his love-hatred of his country. In Las cuatro fugas de Manuel (“Manuel’s four Attempts to flee”), Manuel, a highly gifted Cuban student of physics in the Soviet Union is on the run from the Cuban secret police. In an attempt to reach the Promised West, he fails three times, before finally succeeding and arriving in Germany, while the demise of the Soviet Union is in progress. His story occasionally reads like a parody of the fate of countless refugees. His wanderings stand for those of many people in flight from persecution and in search of the right to a self-determined life in dignity.