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 Litteraire Deux Oceans - Grinzane Cavour (2003), Portela has published the novels El pajaro: pincel y tinta.
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