José María Andrés Fernando Lezama Lima (December 19, 1910 – August 9, 1976) was a Cuban writer, poet and essayist. He is considered one of the most influential figures in Cuban and Latin American literature. His novel Paradiso is one of the most important works in Spanish and one of the best novels of the 20th Century according to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. Lezama is a prominent referent of American Neo-Baroque literature. He created a mature poetic system characterized by its lyricism. His work features a wide variety of metaphors, allusions and allegories which he developed in essays such as Analecta del reloj (1953), La expresión americana (1957), Tratados en La Habana (1958) o La cantidad hechizada (1970). Source: Wikipedia (en)