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The prominent comedian Ulises Toirac announced today, from Havana, that his new book Locos de Barrio: Segundo Round will soon be available for sale on Amazon, bearing the unmistakable mark of someone who has been making Cubans laugh —and think— for 45 years.
The actor and screenwriter also described the volume as "more than a sequel" to the first Locos de Barrio, published in December 2024: "Here I fine-tuned the pen to traverse memory and the present," he wrote on his Facebook profile.
The book maintains the structure of the first one: fifty stories, and interspersed among them are what Toirac refers to as some "silly poems," those verses that do not aim to be Neruda, but add a touch of Cuban "lyrical fun."
Throughout its pages, characters emerge that any Cuban would recognize in their neighborhood or in their own reflection: Lía, the author's dog; Rafelito, the "quendi" of the area; the first culinary attempt by the brother with a potato omelet; and a mobile phone thief in a hospital, which in Cuba is almost a literary genre in itself.
But Toirac does not remain in domestic nostalgia. The book also "takes a jab at the manager of a micro, small, and medium-sized enterprise that sells coffins," a satire that directly targets the ecosystem of small private businesses that has flourished in Cuba with more ingenuity than infrastructure. And, as if Cuban reality needed more comedic material, the volume includes a tribute to chikungunya, the disease that in 2025 was the focus of the first major epidemic of this virus on the island, with thousands of cases, transmission across all 15 provinces, and dozens of confirmed deaths in its lethal combination with dengue. That someone would pay literary tribute to a mosquito speaks volumes about the state of mind —and humor— necessary to survive in Cuba.
The literary hook of "Second Round" comes from the hand of Amir Valle, a Cuban writer residing in Berlin, author of around forty titles and founder of the publishing house Ilíada Ediciones. Toirac did not hide his pride: "The foreword is by Amir Valle, who kindly shot the book while it was being edited and more: he considered it as literature." That Valle, winner of the International Mario Vargas Llosa Novel Prize in 2007, endorses Toirac's book as literature —with all the emphasis— is the kind of endorsement that cannot be bought in any small and medium-sized enterprise, not even in those selling coffins.
The thread that runs through the entire volume, according to its author, is the language of ordinary Cubans: "Sometimes tough, but 'read and written'." That phrase, which would be an error coming from any academic, is a declaration of principles in the mouth of Toirac. The cover of the book features a caricature of Toirac himself—glasses, a knowing wink, and a finger pointing at the volume.
While this "Second Round" is heating up in the locker room, Toirac, a sharp and systematic critic of the Cuban government and its absurdities, invited his followers to get the first volume of his work available on Amazon to complete the saga: "So you can have the collection and no one can tell you the story. Let the books tell it instead," he wrote.
“Soon enough, almost don’t move… Or move, and the almost will be faster,” promised Toirac, with the chronological precision that characterizes everything that works in Cuba: between now and soon, but without an exact date.
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