One Hundred Bottles, with its intersecting characters and unresolved whodunits, can be read as a murder mystery. But it's really a survivor's story. In a voice that blends gossip, storytelling, and literature, Z--the vivacious heroine of Portela's award-winning novel--relates her rum-soaked encounters with the lesbian underground, the characters carving up her home, and the terrifying-but-irresistible Moises. As entertaining as any detective drama, One Hundred Bottles is ultimately made real by very rough love, intense friendship, and something small that decides to live.

Witty and humorously written in colloquial Cuban, One hundred bottles in a wall (2002), anatomy of a double murder, takes place in the '90s Havanna, amidst the crisis provoked by the collapse of the socialist bloc. Zeta -Zee- main character and narrator, who manages to survive by illicit means, recounts her relation with Moises, former judge of the Supreme Court whose story relates to the -crash of a world and the fall of the gods-, the collapse of utopia. With Zeta and her friend Linda -a thriller writer- we delve into a marginal underground world, unheard of in touristic guides to Cuba. Translated into English, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Italian, Greek and Turkish, this is Ena Lucia Portela's best known novel. Born in 1972 in Havanna, Cuba, where she lives nowadays, Portela takes a center place in Cuban present literature. A Havanna University Graduate in Classic Languages and Literatures, she writes both fiction and essays. Besides this novel, that won the XVII Jaen Novel Award (2002) and the French critique Prix Litteraire Deux Oceans - Grinzane Cavour (2003), Portela has published the novels El pajaro: pincel y tinta china (1999), La sombra del caminante (2006) and Djuna y Daniel (2008), and the short stories volumes Una extrana entre las piedras (1999) and Alguna enfermedad muy grave (2006). The critical anthology of her short stories El viejo, el asesino, yo y otros cuentos, was published by Stockcero in 2009. Published in nine languages and more than twenty countries Portela was selected as one of the most influential 39 Latin American writers less than 39 years old. This edition includes a foreword, -About the black novel: poetry and politics in Cien botellas en la pared-, by Iraida H. Lopez, that deals with police fiction in Cuba as well as in the Latin American context, and proposes reading this work as a black novel. Hundreds of footnotes, by the author as well as by the Literary Editor, deal with both lexical, cultural, literary and historic background references, transforming this edition into a great opportunity to fully enjoy the fiction of this unique Cuban novelist.

El viejo, el asesino, yo y otros cuentos gathers nine stories and a testimonial essay by Ena Lucia Portela, who began to publish in the 1990's and has been recognized as one of the outstanding stars of recent Cuban fiction. Portela was born Dec. 19, 1972 in Havana, where she still lives. She is the author of the novels "El pajaro: pincel y tinta china" (1999), "La sombra del caminante" (2001), "Cien botellas en una pared" (2002; winner that year of the Jaen Novel Prize awarded by the Caja de Ahorros of Granada, Spain, and 2003 winner of the Prix Litteraire Deux Oceans Grinzane Cavour awarded by French critics), y "Djuna y Daniel" (2008; recipient of the Cuban Critics' Award), and the short story collections "Una extrana entre las piedras" (1999) and "Alguna enfermedad muy grave (2006). She writes occasionally for the newspaper El Pais of Spain, and for magazines such as Index on Censorship, Encuentro de la cultura cubana, SoHo, Critica and La Siempreviva, among others. Portela's texts have appeared in many anthologies of short stories and essays, both in Cuba and in many other countries. Her work has appeared in nine languages and in over twenty countries. She was selected in May, 2007 as one of the 39 most important writers in Latin America under 39 year sold. The texts included in the present volume were published between 1993 and 2008 in two collections and various magazines. This volume closes with a testimonial essay, "Alas rotas," first published in 2008. A short film based on Portela's story "El viejo, el asesino y yo," 1999 winner of the Juan Rulfo Prize awarded by French International Radio, and used as the title of the present collection, will be shown at the Festival de Cine Pobre, in Gibara, Cuba. Besides being marvelous stories in themselves, this anthology provides an introduction to Portela's works of fiction and non-fiction. Literature is a key element in Portela's work, and references to books and authors of all eras are interwoven throughout her writings, as well as references to the plastic arts, film and music. The density of cultural reference is accessible, and is both serious and playful. Today's Cuba appears as a backdrop of the stories, but not in a crude or touristic way. Even criticism is made to serve literary purposes. Iraida H. Lopez' prologue offers an overview of the short story in Cuba since 1959, focusing particularly on the 1990's generation. She discusses not only there current themes in Portela's stories, but also many of the strategies utilized by the author to accomplish her goals. More than a hundred footnotes, in the production of which Lopez and Portela collaborated, elucidate both personal and academic aspects of the stories.