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Cuban Ena Lucia Portela's best known novel, in an annotated, critical edition by prof. Iraida H. Lopez

Humorously written in Cuban colloquial language, One Hundred Bottles on a Wall (2002) is the anatomy of a double murder that takes place in '90s Havana.
Amidst the crisis provoked by the collapse of the socialist bloc, the novel is set in a marginal underground world, unheard of in tourist guides to Cuba.
Zeta, the main character and narrator, who manages to survive by illicit means, recounts her relationship with Moises. A former judge of the Supreme Court, Moises's story is tied to the collapse of utopia.
Much to the island's regime dismal this novel describes a life with which the 20/30 years old generation, soon to become the major social force in Cuba, certainly identifies.

Translated into English, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Italian, Greek, and Turkish, this is Ena Lucia Portela's best known novel.
Born in 1972 in Havana, Cuba, where she currently resides, Portela is a key figure in the present-day Cuban literary scene.
A Classic Languages and Literatures graduate of Havana University, she is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist.

This edition includes a foreword, «On Noir: Poetics and Politics in Cien Botellas en la Pared» by Iraida H. Lopez.
It offers a summary of crime fiction in Cuba and a reading of the novel as noir. Hundreds of footnotes, by the author and by the Literary Editor, deal with lexical, cultural, literary, and historical references, offering an opportunity to fully delve into the fiction of this unique Cuban novelist.

Also by Ena Lucía Portela El viejo, el asesino y yo, y otros cuentos.

Cien botellas en una pared
Ena Lucia Portela - Iraida H. Lopez (editor)
ISBN 978-1-934768-33-4 - JULY 2010
Library of Congress number 2010929752
336 Pages - In Spanish – Annotated
Printed edition: $46.00.-
Evaluation copy: $29.90.-

$ 56.55.- nett (plus shipping)