Offered a commission to illegally trap a rare Russian butterfly, J. decides to use the opportunity to smuggle his Russian lover, who has no papers, back into her homeland, but after she mysteriously vanishes in the port of Odessa, he spends his time waiting for her return, reading her letters, and hoping to find both the butterfly and his lost love.

Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire

Literature & Fiction

Prieto, José Manuel

Christensen, Thomas

Literary

Grove Pr

The new novel from internationally acclaimed author José Manuel Prieto, Rex is a 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 he stays with the family, J. 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. As J. attempts to give Vasily’s son a general grade-school education by exclusively reading him Proust, the paranoid world of Vasily’s household comes ever closer to its unmasking.

Rex: A Novel

United States

GROVE PRESS

In Encyclopedia of a Life in Russia, acclaimed author José Manuel Prieto has masterfully crafted a kaleidoscopic portrait of post-Communist Russia. Strikingly poetic and cleverly humorous, it's the story of two misfits caught between old world traditions and the lure of contemporary Western influences as they set off on an adventure to immerse themselves in the beauty of the world. Thelonius Monk (not his real name) and Linda Evangelista (not her real name) meet in Saint Petersburg after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. They journey to Yalta, where Thelonius promises to make Linda famous in the fashion magazines. But in fact, he's drafting a novel about her. Over the course of their travels, the two indulge in all sorts of sensual amusements—extravagant dinners, luxury automobiles, seaside hotels—while they engage in grand discussions of love, art, celebrity, and other existential polarities. Alphabetically organized from Abacus to Zizi, this book defies chronology and conformity. Finding the sublime in the trivial through meditations on wildly varied subjects of fact and fancy—from Bach and Dostoyevsky to Italian alligator shoes and fluoride toothpaste—Prieto ardently explores the crossroads of literature, philosophy, history, and pop culture in this singular novel that captures a nation straddling custom and innovation.

Encyclopedia of a Life in Russia

Grove Press/ Black Cat

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

Contemporary

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.

Construido como un juego de espejos, su trama podria ser la de un thriller: gracias a sus conocimientos de la lengua rusa, un joven se coloca como maestro privado en la casa de unos archimillonarios rusos en la Costa del Sol. Pronto comprende que la familia se esconde por algun motivo que involucra los mas fabulosos diamantes jamas vistos. Su perplejidad aumenta cuando Vasily, un ex cientifico que ha hecho una fortuna en los anos noventa, es convencido por su esposa de que la unica salida es una huida hacia adelante: con la ayuda de la mafia rusa, llegar a ocupar el trono vacio de los Zares. Un sofisticado juego literario que tiene como principal dispositivo narrativo el comentario de textos a la manera de Santo Tomas, y en el que las citas de autoridades se enlazan con argumentos de la optica cuantica y la fisica de los agujeros negros. Su imagineria visual, su opulencia verbal y rigor literario la colocan en un lugar aparte dentro de la mas reciente produccion literaria de Hispanoamerica. El espiritu de Nabokov, vivo y sensible, ha tocado a Prieto con sus alas de mariposa (Aleksandar Hemon); Sus frases continuamente producen maravillas (Michael Woods, The New York Review of Books).

Rex (Narrativas Hispanicas) (Spanish Edition)

Editorial Anagrama

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Prieto, José Manuel. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Prieto, José Manuel

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Prieto, José Manuel. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire

Rex: A Novel

Encyclopedia of a Life in Russia

Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire

Rex: A Novel

Rex (Narrativas Hispanicas) (Spanish Edition)