Editorial Letras Cubanas (cover design: Raúl Martínez; cover illustration: Rubén Iglesias; editor: Silvana Garriga; author: José Soler Puig), "El pan dormido," 1977. Print book.

"El pan dormido" (The Sleeping Bread) is the acclaimed second novel by José Soler Puig (1916-1990), originally published in 1975 and reissued by Editorial Letras Cubanas in this second edition in 1977. The cover features a remarkable collaboration between Raúl Martínez's design direction and Rubén Iglesias's primitive-style illustration of three abstracted figures rendered in bold black line work with selective touches of red and yellow-orange against natural kraft paper. The composition evokes pre-Columbian art and Afro-Cuban visual traditions, with its geometric faces, patterned textures using cross-hatching and stippling, and stylized body forms that suggest ceremonial or mythological figures.

This visual approach perfectly complements Soler Puig's narrative exploration of Cuban identity and memory through the perspective of a 55-year-old man attempting to reconnect with his childhood self. The primitive aesthetic signals the novel's excavation of primal Cuban experiences and cultural roots. Martínez's overall design strategy—combining Iglesias's folkloric imagery with clean, modern typography—demonstrates how Cuban book design integrated indigenous and African visual vocabularies with contemporary graphic principles. Published during a period when Cuban literature was grappling with questions of national identity and revolutionary consciousness, this cover design situates Soler Puig's introspective novel within a broader visual discourse about cubanidad, creating a book object that functions as both literary artifact and cultural statement about the multiplicity of Cuban artistic traditions.