Now in paperback, Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire was acclaimed by The Hartford Courant as "a thrilling discovery ... a reversal of the letters [of] Saul Bellow's Herzog ... [with] a Nabokovian delight in words and texts." J. is a smuggler living in Russia, making his living fencing the flotsam of communism's collapse. In Istanbul he takes a commission to trap an endangered Russian butterfly and decides to use it as an opportunity to smuggle V., his Russian lover who has no papers, back into her homeland. In the port of Odessa, she disappears, and J. continues alone to a small village on the Black Sea. Letters from V. begin to arrive, and as J. hunts the butterfly, he seeks a way to lure V. back into his life. Equal parts bittersweet love story, international intrigue, and one man's quest to write the perfect love letter, Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire, wrote The Tennessean, is "an amazing jewel of a story ... that winks with wit [and] wears its astonishing craftsmanship lightly." "An aesthetically blissful reading experience ... Nabokov's spirit, alive and kind, has touched [Prieto] with its butterfly wings." -- Aleksandar Hemon, The Village Voice Literary Supplement ."..Nocturnal Butterflies is an impressive performance by a writer whose gifts are clearly abundant." -- Richard Bernstein, The New York Times "A beautiful, lavish, seedy, poetic, and magical book.... Pure pleasure for the literary mind." -- Chris Kridler, The Baltimore Sun

* A terrifyingly original writer, Jose Manuel Prieto's prose shakes the walls of the literary kingdom. --Gary Shteyngart
In Encyclopedia of a Life in Russia, Jose Manuel Prieto has beautifully crafted a kaleidoscopic portrait of modern life in Russia through alphabetical encyclopedic entries. Poetic, humorous, truth-seeking, and fanciful, Prieto melds literature, philosophy, and pop culture into a story of two misfits caught between old traditions and modern consumerism.
Thelonius Monk (not his real name) travels to Russia and meets Linda Evangelista (not her real name) in Saint Petersburg. They journey to Yalta, where he promises that he will make her red hair famous in the fashion magazines. In fact, he's drafting a novel about her--his notes for the novel comprise this Encyclopedia. Thelonious and Linda think of themselves as avatars of consumer culture, navigating the border between art and commerce during the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. Unwittingly they parody Russian fascination with America and its fixation on beauty and celebrity. Their conversations combine advertisement copy and art criticism, their personalities are both bohemian and commercial, and their aspirations revolve around frivolity and enchantment.
Encyclopedia of a Life in Russia is a novel that defies chronology and conformity, and finds the sublime in the trivial, ranging from meditations on Bach and Dostoyevsky to Italian alligator shoes and toothpaste.

Miguel Barnet's A True Story is based on the life of Julian Mesa, a Cuban living in New York City. The novel spans the years between the 1930s to the 1980s as the protagonist moves from Cuba to the US. Throughout the novel Julian, a building supervisor in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, recounts his life beginning with his early childhood years in the Cuban countryside and ending on the brink of tears as he dreams about an island which he dreams of seeing again. His account tells of the brutal work of the Cuban peasant in the sugarcane fields as well as the oppressive unemployment situation in Havana during the 1930s and 40s. Arriving in New York before the triumph of the Revolution in search of better opportunities, Julian struggles to keep Cuba alive within him through language, newspapers, social clubs, radio, and letters. A True Story highlights the Hispanic community in New York, especially the close relationships between Cubans and Puerto Ricans, and acknowledges the important events that took place in this city which are fundamental to the history of Cuba. Barnet brings to life the voice of a man with a deeply broken heart that would otherwise be silenced. Miguel Barnet is a major novelist, poet, and ethnographer living in Havana. He is best known for his testimonial novels. His work is widely read throughout Cuba and abroad and has been translated into numerous languages. He has received many awards including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Regina Galasso is a professor of Spanish language and literature at The City University of New York. " A True Story makes us] think about The Old Man and the Sea: a magnificent voyage, dignity where there isn't any, tenderness and resignation, struggle and memories of a lost world. All of that to return to any port with a victory in which everything has been lost." Alfredo Bryce Echenique Unomasuno, Mexico City "In La vida real, Barnet confronts the dilemma of the Latin America immigrant in the United States not from the standpoint of politics, rather, from the perspective of what is universal and human regardless of political and cultural divisions." S.R. Wilson, Chasqui-Revista de literatura latinoamericana