José Manuel prieto

Rex

José Manuel prieto

Now in paperback, José Manuel Prieto’s Rex is a sexy, zany, and sophisticated literary game rife with allusions to Proust and Borges, set in a world of wealthy Russian expats and mafiosos who have settled in western Europe.J. is a young Cuban man who, thanks to his knowledge of Russian and Spanish, has become the tutor of the young son of a wealthy Russian couple living in Marbella, in the part of southern Spain that the Russian mafia has turned into its winter quarters. As J. attempts to give the boy a general grade-school education by exclusively reading him Proust, he also becomes the personal secretary of the boy’s father, Vasily, an ex-scientist that J. suspects is on the run from gangsters. Vasily’s wife, Nelly, a seductive woman always draped in mind-boggling quantities of precious stones, believes the only way to evade the gangsters is an extravagant plan linking Vasily to the throne of the czars. Rex is an unforgettable achievement: an illusory, allusive gem of a novel that confirms José Manuel Prieto as one of the most talented writers of his generation.

Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire

José Manuel prieto

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