Born in Havana on December 19, 1910, José Lezama Lima became a notable writer.
He was the author, among other works of the book PARADISO, a novel that placed him at the center of attention in the intellectual sphere of Cuba and also internationally.
His father was Colonel and director of the Military Academy of Morro.
When he was nine he suffered the death of his father, a fact that deeply moved him.
Precisely in relation to this he once said: "The death of my father hallucinated me as a child, that absence made me hypersensitive."
From a young age Lezama Lima began to show his aptitudes in the field of literature and particularly in what refers to poetry. In 1936 he published his first book entitled Death of Narcissus.
After finishing his university studies he started working in a law firm until 1941, when he started working in the offices of the Superior Council of Social Defense.
During his life he also founded, directed and collaborated with different publications. In 1944 he began editing the magazine Origen, which for a decade became an excellent cultural vehicle.
The magazine served to bring together a number of poets, painters, storytellers and other artists in a group that would also qualify with the name of Origins.

Lezama Lima also published several books of poetry and also several essays, but his most famous work turned out to be the novel Paradiso.
About this work he said: "It was like being born again after thirty and many years of writing thousands of pages."
De Paradiso has been said to be a learning novel by reflecting the transition of its protagonist from childhood to adolescence, his intellectual initiation, the discovery of friendship and sexuality and finally the encounter with his teacher.
This novel also offers an impressive image of Cuban society in the first half of the twentieth century.
There are scholars of the life and work of Lezama Lima who have considered Paradiso as the culmination of the poetic system of a writer who based his work on the search for the verbal coordinates of our national identity.
Lezama Lima died in Havana on August 9, 1976. Some time after his death a museum was created in the house that he lived for many years in Trocadero Street 162, between Industry and Consulate, in Havana.