Mayra Montero

"Juxtaposed with the animal passions conjured by the married couple is a series of lyrical love letters to "Angela" from "Abel," two lovers with a secret of their own, explored but not explained until the very end, when their fate mirrors that of Celia and Fernando."--BOOK JACKET.

A Novel

The Last Night I Spent With You

Viaje a Isla de Mona

Captain of the Sleepers

Edith Grossman

An intricately woven tapestry of love, hate, and death follows the vibrant Holy Week festival where passion blossoms between Mistress Zule, a voudou priestess and spiritual leader, and the notorious Simila Bolosse, a rival priest who has the support of the brutal tontons macoutes. Reader's Guide available. Reprint.

The Red of His Shadow

For fifty years, Andres Yasin has carried a grudge against J.T. Bunker. Now, Bunker, eighty-two years old and dying of cancer, wants to tell his side of a story, a story of his affair with Andres's mother. As a child Andres knew Bunker as the "Captain of the Sleepers"-so called because he transported the bodies of those who had died off the island, but wished to be buried at home. But what really happened between Bunker and Andres's mother, between his mother and her next lover, a leader in the Puerto Rican Nationalistic Insurrection, and what were the actual circumstances of Andres's mother's mysterious death? In this taut, erotic novel that slips effortlessly between past and present, remembrance and reality, Mayra Montero describes a feverish Caribbean childhood of secrets, disillusionment, and sexual awakening. Beautifully translated by Edith Grossman, The Captain of the Sleepers confirms Montero's stature as one of our finest prose stylists and as an international writer of the first rank.

Havana, 1957. On the same day that the Mafia capo Umberto Anastasia is assassinated in a barber's chair in New York, a hippopotamus escapes from the Havana zoo and is shot and killed by its pursuers. Assigned to cover the zoo story, Joaquín Porrata, a young Cuban journalist, instead finds himself embroiled in the mysterious connections between the hippo's death and the mobster's when a secretive zookeeper whispers to him that he "knows too much." In exchange for a promise to introduce the keeper to his idol, the film star George Raft, now the host of the Capri Casino, Joaquín gets information that ensnares him in an ever-thickening plot of murder, mobsters, and, finally, love. The love story is, of course, another mystery. Told by Yolanda, a beautiful ex-circus performer now working for the famed cabaret San Souci, it interleaves through Joaquín's underworld investigations, eventually revealing a family secret deeper even than Havana's brilliantly evoked enigmas. In Dancing to "Almendra," Mayra Montero has created an ardent and thrilling tale of innocence lost, of Havana's secret world that is "the basis for the clamor of the city," and of the end of a violent era of fantastic characters and extravagant crimes. Based on the true history of a bewitching city and its denizens, Almendra is the latest "triumph" (Library Journal) from one of Latin America's most impassioned and intoxicating voices.

Dancing to "Almendra"

Two men of very different cultures--American herpetologist Victor Griggs and his Haitian guide, Thierry Adrien--embark on a obsessive odyssey through the mountains of Haiti in search of a mysterious amphibian, the blood frog. First serial, Conjunctions. Tour.

In the Palm of Darkness

Enrico, the world's most highly paid tenor, lands in Havana in 1920, carrying with him the death threat of the Sicilian Black Hand. But when a bomb explodes during a performance, and he runs terrified into the arms of a Chinese widow, he is not running from his destiny but towards it.

Messenger

Son de almendra

Havana 1957. On the same day that the Mafia capo Umberto Anastasia is assassinated in a barber’s chair in New York, a hippopotamus escapes from Havana Zoo. Joaquin Porrata is the young Cuban journalist assigned to cover the latter story but, told by a secretive zookeeper that he ‘knows too much’, he soon discovers that the two events are not as unconnected as they might initially seem. An ardent and thrilling tale of innocence lost, of Havana’s secret one-time world of violence, fantastic characters and extravagant crimes, Dancing to ‘Almendra’ is a triumph of story-telling from one of Latin America’s most impassioned and intoxicating voices. ‘Brilliant . . . Montero moves her story along at a lick, but in the giddy swirl of events she leaves plenty of space for absurdist humour. She handles this blend of fact and fiction with brio’ Observer ‘Combining the dangerous world of violence with the glittering surface of Havana’s nightlife, this is an intoxicating tale’ Metro ‘A sensitive and touching novel’ Big Issue ‘Brilliant . . . Dancing to ‘Almendra’ is an exuberant must-read’ Observer

Dancing to 'Almendra'

Celia and Fernando, a long-married couple, embark on a Caribbean cruise in order to revitalize their fading marriage, but a mysterious passenger named Julieta leads them to lose their inhibitions and turn to others to fulfill their dark and passionate fantasies

Mayra Montero

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