Cuban writer wins national literature award for 2014

Cuban novelist and critic Eduardo Heras Leon won the National Literature Award 2014, the jury in charge announced on Saturday.

Heras Leon, 74, was given the prestigious award as a token of recognition for his lifework as a writer, art critic and university professor, the daily Granma said.

Orphaned at the age of 12, Heras Leon had a quite tough life during his youth, when he made a living by shining shoes and selling newspapers and lottery tickets, among other means of livelihood.

Later he joined the revolutionary movement led by Fidel Castro in the fight against Dictator Fulgencio Batista. He remained in the military after the victory in January 1959, and according to his official biography, in this period he trained a group of Nicaraguan guerrillas fighters who later became founding members of the Sandinista Front of National Liberation, currently ruling the Central American country.

He returned to civilian life in 1968 and published his first book while he was still studying journalism. Well-known stories in this book include "The War Had Six Names" and "Steps on the Grass."

His second volume tells the stories of militia fighters in early 1960s and these short novels made even greater social impact as they inspired an ideological polemic at the beginning of the so-called "Gray Five-Year Period" (1971-76) when many Cuban intellectuals were censored because of their political views or sexual orientation.

Heras left the university and worked for several years at a steel plant. He re-took the pen in 1976 and soon published "Steel" and "With Cleaning Fire."

Other titles of his best known books include "The New War", "Ballad for An Impossible Love" and "The captain's night." Endi