One Hundred Bottles, with its intersecting characters and unresolved whodunits, can be read as a murder mystery. But it's really a survivor's story. In a voice that blends gossip, storytelling, and literature, Z—the vivacious heroine of Portela's award-winning novel—relates her rum-soaked encounters with the lesbian underground, the characters carving up her home, and the terrifying-but-irresistible Moisés. As entertaining as any detective drama, One Hundred Bottles is ultimately made real by very rough love, intense friendship, and something small that decides to live.

One Hundred Bottles

Literature & Fiction

Portela, Ena Lucía

Literary

University of Texas Press

One Hundred Bottles, with its intersecting characters and unresolved whodunits, can be read as a murder mystery. But it's really a survivor's story. In a voice that blends gossip, storytelling, and literature, Z—the vivacious heroine of Portela's award-winning novel—relates her rum-soaked encounters with the lesbian underground, the characters carving up her home, and the terrifying-but-irresistible Moisés. As entertaining as any detective drama, One Hundred Bottles is ultimately made real by very rough love, intense friendship, and something small that decides to live.

El viejo, el asesino, yo y otros cuentos gathers nine stories and a testimonial essay by Ena Lucía Portela, who began to publish in the 1990's and has been recognized as one of the outstanding stars of recent Cuban fiction. Portela was born Dec. 19, 1972 in Havana, where she still lives. She is the author of the novels "El pájaro: pincel y tinta china" (1999), "La sombra del caminante" (2001), "Cien botellas en una pared" (2002; winner that year of the Jaen Novel Prize awarded by the Caja de Ahorros of Granada, Spain, and 2003 winner of the Prix Littéraire Deux Océans Grinzane Cavour awarded by French critics), y "Djuna y Daniel" (2008; recipient of the Cuban Critics' Award), and the short story collections "Una extraña entre las piedras" (1999) and "Alguna enfermedad muy grave (2006). She writes occasionally for the newspaper El País of Spain,and for magazines such as Index on Censorship, Encuentro de la cultura cubana, SoHo, Crítica and La Siempreviva, among others. Portela's texts have appeared in many anthologies of short stories and essays, both in Cuba and in many other countries. Her work has appeared in nine languages and in over twenty countries. She was selected in May, 2007 as one of the 39 most important writers in Latin America under 39 year sold. The texts included in the present volume were published between 1993 and 2008 in two collections and various magazines. This volume closes with a testimonial essay, "Alas rotas," first published in 2008. A short film based on Portela's story "El viejo, el asesino y yo," 1999 winner of the Juan Rulfo Prize awarded by French International Radio, and used as the title of the present collection, will be shown at the Festival de Cine Pobre, in Gibara, Cuba. Besides being marvelous stories in themselves, this anthology provides an introduction to Portela's works of fiction and non-fiction. Literature is a key element in Portela's work, and references to books and authors of all eras are interwoven throughout her writings, as well as references to the plastic arts, film and music. The density of cultural reference is accessible, and is both serious and playful. Today's Cuba appears as a backdrop of the stories, but not in a crude or touristic way. Even criticism is made to serve literary purposes. Iraida H. Lopez' prologue offers an overview of the short story in Cuba since 1959, focusing particularly on the 1990's generation. She discusses not only there current themes in Portela's stories, but also many of the strategies utilized by the author to accomplish her goals. More than a hundred footnotes, in the production of which Lopez and Portela collaborated, elucidate both personal and academic aspects of the stories.

El Viejo, El Asesino, Yo, y Otros Cuentos (Spanish Edition)

Contemporary

Stockcero

Witty and humorously written in colloquial Cuban, One hundred bottles in a wall (2002), anatomy of a double murder, takes place in the '90s Havanna, amidst the crisis provoked by the collapse of the socialist bloc. Zeta -Zee- main character and narrator, who manages to survive by illicit means, recounts her relation with Moises, former judge of the Supreme Court whose story relates to the «crash of a world and the fall of the gods», the collapse of utopia. With Zeta and her friend Linda -a thriller writer- we delve into a marginal underground world, unheard of in touristic guides to Cuba. Translated into English, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Italian, Greek and Turkish, this is Ena Lucia Portela's best known novel. Born in 1972 in Havanna, Cuba, where she lives nowadays, Portela takes a center place in Cuban present literature. A Havanna University Graduate in Classic Languages and Literatures, she writes both fiction and essays. Besides this novel, that won the XVII Jaen Novel Award (2002) and the French critique Prix Littéraire Deux Océans - Grinzane Cavour (2003), Portela has published the novels El pájaro: pincel y tinta china (1999), La sombra del caminante (2006) and Djuna y Daniel (2008), and the short stories volumes Una extraña entre las piedras (1999) and Alguna enfermedad muy grave (2006). The critical anthology of her short stories El viejo, el asesino, yo y otros cuentos, was published by Stockcero in 2009. Published in nine languages and more than twenty countries Portela was selected as one of the most influential 39 Latin American writers less than 39 years old. This edition includes a foreword, «About the black novel: poetry and politics in Cien botellas en la pared», by Iraida H. Lopez, that deals with police fiction in Cuba as well as in the Latin American context, and proposes reading this work as a black novel. Hundreds of footnotes, by the author as well as by the Literary Editor, deal with both lexical, cultural, literary and historic background references, transforming this edition into a great opportunity to fully enjoy the fiction of this unique Cuban novelist.

Cien Botellas En Una Pared (Spanish Edition)

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

El Pajaro: Pincel y Tinta China

Politics & Social Sciences

Casiopea

Alguna enfermedad muy grave / Some very Serious Illness (Spanish Edition)

United States

Hk Books

La sombra del caminante bien podría, más allá de cualquier contrapunto a justo título, haberse llamado Inferno: éste es un libro sobre el mal. O quizá aclaren las mayúsculas, el Mal. ¿Sobre, acerca de? ¿Puede algo en verdad decirse -narrarse, escribirse, nombrarse a ciencia cierta, en un sentido recto- sobre el Mal? ¿Cómo es que se da testimonio del día de la cólera? Ena Lucía Portela (La Habana, 1972) es autora de una sólida obra narrativa. Además de La sombra del caminante (2001), ha publicado las novelas El pájaro: pincel y tinta china (1999, Premio Cirilo Villaverde 1997), Cien botellas en una pared (2002, Premio Jaén de Novela y Premio Dos Océanos-Grinzane Cavour 2003) y Djuna y Daniel (2007, Premio de la crítica), y los relatos de El viejo, el asesino, yo y otros cuentos (2009). Reside en La Habana.

La sombra del caminante (Bokeh narrativa) (Spanish Edition)

Bokeh

«Con El pájaro: pincel y tinta china y La sombra del caminante Ena Lucía Portela ha otorgado ámbito y aliento mayores a ese continuum narrativo que es su obra, sin duda el más nutrido, ambicioso y logrado corpus de estos años, por el que desfilan y se intersectan personajes que en su mayoría pertenecen a un pequeño mundo intelectual, underground y bastante sórdido desde el que cínica e intensamente es presentado el entorno social, entre bromas y humor que no perdonan a nadie ni a nada». [Luisa Campuzano]
Ena Lucía Portela (La Habana, 1972) es autora de una sólida obra narrativa. Además de El pájaro: pincel y tinta china (1999, Premio Cirilo Villaverde 1997), ha publicado las novelas La sombra del caminante (2001), Cien botellas en una pared (2002, Premio Jaén de Novela y Premio Dos Océanos-Grinzane Cavour 2003) y Djuna y Daniel (2007, Premio de la crítica), y los relatos de El viejo, el asesino, yo y otros cuentos (2009). Reside en La Habana.

El pájaro: pincel y tinta china (Bokeh narrativa) (Spanish Edition)

«El año próximo en Jerusalén es el título de la primera novela de Linda Roth, que en Cien botellas en una pared es, amén de autora de esta y de otras dos, la mejor amiga de Zeta, y también la amante -luego ex- de Alix Ostión [...]. Linda se dedica al género negro y es, en palabras de Zeta, «una escritora profesional, una escritora de verdad, viajera, ambiciosa y enérgica, a sus horas feminista y con pensamientos de gran envergadura». Aunque a fin de cuentas, ¿qué o quién es alguien? Zeta, que es quien cuenta, se lo preguntará varias veces. Alix en la novela es casi una sombra, menos ella misma que la amante de, y quizá su entidad más de fondo esté en un único gesto, el último antes de desaparecer y borrarse, que desencadena la muerte de una persona para salvar a otra que todavía no ha nacido» [W. Pérez Cino] 
Ena Lucía Portela (La Habana, 1972) es autora de una sólida obra narrativa. Además de Cien botellas en una pared (2002, Premio Jaén de Novela y Premio Dos Océanos-Grinzane Cavour 2003), ha publicado las novelas El pájaro: pincel y tinta china (1999, Premio Cirilo Villaverde 1997), La sombra del caminante (2001) y Djuna y Daniel (2007, Premio de la crítica), los relatos de El viejo, el asesino, yo y otros cuentos (2009) y el volumen de ensayos Con hambre y sin dinero (2017). Reside en La Habana.

Cien botellas en una pared (Bokeh narrativa) (Spanish Edition)

La sombra del caminante,es un relato sobre la violencia en el mundo contemporaneo,los protagonistas de esta novella se sumergen en la busqueda de este yo interior.ena lucia portela,[Habana 1972].ha escrito ademas cien botellas en una pared,una extrana entre las piedras,relatos,y la novella,el pajaro,pincel y tinta china.

La sombra del caminante (Contemporáneos) (Spanish Edition)

Unión.

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Books by Portela, Ena Lucía

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One Hundred Bottles

One Hundred Bottles

El Viejo, El Asesino, Yo, y Otros Cuentos (Spanish Edition)

Cien Botellas En Una Pared (Spanish Edition)

El Pajaro: Pincel y Tinta China

Alguna enfermedad muy grave / Some very Serious Illness (Spanish Edition)

La sombra del caminante (Bokeh narrativa) (Spanish Edition)

El pájaro: pincel y tinta china (Bokeh narrativa) (Spanish Edition)

Cien botellas en una pared (Bokeh narrativa) (Spanish Edition)

La sombra del caminante (Contemporáneos) (Spanish Edition)