José Manuel Prieto: Literature, Revolution, Exile - By Bill Marx (PRI's The World)

Before committing suicide in 1993, Cuban writer Guillermo Rosales destroyed most of his manuscripts. He did published a short novel though, The Halfway House, now considered a modern classic ... read more

Read also: La splendide ilusion Cubain (Books)

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IN THE FOREIGN LAND with PAVEL LEMBERSKY and JOSÉ MANUEL PRIETO

Tuesday, January 31
6:30 pm CEC ArtsLink Offices
435 Hudson, Floor 8
New York
Free Event
RSVP to zstadnik@cecartslink.org

Pavel Lembersky and José Manuel Prieto will read from their novels and talk about how their unique émigré experiences shaped their writing and brought forth idiosyncratic new worlds of two very different protagonists.

Pavel Lembersky’s recently published novel , Aboard the 500^th Jolly Echelon tells a detective story in jazzily syncopated language with unlikely twists and philosophical implications. Jose Manuel Prieto’s Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire, a book “woven from an abundance of subtle threads”, is a story of love, smuggling and a search for an elusive butterfly.

“Imagine Borges writing philosophical conceptual anecdotes using the sparkling language of Isaac Babel. Sometimes the significant parts are located in the breaks between the [Pavel Lembersky's] phrases, and one can feel the draught of pain and despair blowing from those gaps which perhaps irony alone can suppress.” – Anton Nesterov, «Nezavisimaia Gazeta»

“[Jose Manuel] Prieto seems as comfortable writing about the Crimea as he is about Istanbul, Finland, or Milan, his eyes wide open, his mind working, … steadily producing wonder and a few chuckles …. Nabokov’s spirit, alive and kind, has touched him with its butterfly wings.” –Aleksandar Hernon, The Village Voice Literary Supplement