Gutierrez is a more honest Henry Miller--he reveals the rotten, despairing philosophical underpinnings of his sexual behaviour. Unlike Miller, who tried to justify his actions, Gutierrez is brutally honest about himself. The settings and events are often sordid and disgusting, but the narrator himself is a higher being, a refined sensibility still capable of acknowledging the truth about the actions to which he is driven. The Dirty Havana Trilogy also recalls "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", but the ultra low-budget sewer that is Castro's Cuba makes the Communist Czechoslavkia of Milan Kundera's time look like Donald Trump's New York.
Clearly, this is not a book for those who are easily offended. There is lots of meaningless death, meaningless sex, casually pejorative slurs on people of colour and women, descriptions of filthy and disgusting environments. But, notwithstanding the blurbs on the dust jacket of the book, Gutierrez's work is a very moral work in the sense that any reader will clearly see the cost of such behaviour and be unlikely to imitate the narrator.
It would be fascinating to systematically compare this book, with its indictment of the moral choices remaining to the ordinary person living under Casto's government, to Armando Valladares' "Against all Hope", which is also available on Amazon.com, of course.
This is another interesting addition to the "lying in the gutter and looking at the stars" genre. Highly recommended for those who are up for it.