AUTHOR

Humberto López y Guerra (also known by his literary pseudonym H. L. Guerra) is a Cuban‑Swedish filmmaker, journalist, and writer. He has directed more than twenty documentaries and series for Swedish television, several of which have received international recognition. His awards include a Prix Italia for the documentary Arrabal, the Nordvision Award for Best Television Series for Ondskans år (The Years of Evil), and an Emmy nomination for Det långa straffet (The Long Punishment). His documentary Federico García Lorca: Mordet skedde i Granada (Federico García Lorca: The Murder Took Place in Granada) has been screened at film festivals in Lille, Barcelona, and elsewhere.

Born on 12 August 1942 in Matanzas, Cuba, he began his film career in the 1960s, making documentaries and short films in his home country. He studied film at the prestigious Babelsberg Film School in what was then East Germany. He later settled in Sweden, where he has lived for decades, became a Swedish citizen, and continued his work as a director, screenwriter, and producer.

As a novelist, H. L. Guerra has established himself within the international tradition of espionage thrillers. He has published two novels in Spanish that attracted significant attention from the international press: El traidor de Praga (The Traitor of Prague, 2012) and Triángulo de espías (Triangle of Spies, 2016).

In 2018, he made his Swedish‑language debut with the successful novel Den ofrivillige spionen (The Involuntary Spy), the first instalment in the “KSI” series. The second volume, Gryningens skuggor (Shadows of Dawn), appeared in 2021.

With his new novel El otro espía (The Other Spy), H. L. Guerra returns to his mother tongue. The book was praised by El Nuevo Herald for its narrative depth and meticulous attention to detail and selected by the independent Cuban newspaper 14yMedio as one of the fourteen most important Cuban books of 2025.

His literary work focuses on historical espionage, a genre he approaches with documentary rigor, narrative sensitivity, and a deeply human perspective. His novels combine exhaustive research, political tension, and exceptional atmospheric reconstruction, making him a distinctive voice in Spanish‑language historical thrillers.

A critic of the Castro regime, he has given interviews—such as in Cubanet—in which he recounts how he ended up in exile in Sweden after disagreements with the Cuban government.

López y Guerra writes historical espionage from the vantage point of a documentary filmmaker: every detail researched, every atmosphere reconstructed, every character shaped by the tension between the real and the possible. His novels do not seek to glorify secret agents, but to reveal human fragility in times of suspicion. Havana, Prague, Berlin, Stockholm, Miami—these are cities he knows not as a tourist, but as a witness.

His work—both in film and literature—is, at its core, a meditation on identity, loyalty, and memory. And on how a man can belong to several countries while remaining true to himself.