The day before salsa diva Celia Cruz's death, I happened to purchase "¡Cubanísimo! -- The Vintage Book of Contemporary Cuban Literature". In editor Cristina García's introduction I read:

“[An] elasticity of identity is also the concern of José Manuel Prieto, who spent his formative years in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and who now teaches Russian literature in Mexico City. His novel, Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire, is indebted as much to Vladimir Nabokov and the Russian masters as to José Lezama Lima and José Martí. It's a story of a Cuban smuggler-cum-lepidopterist negotiating the collapse of Communism and his own fractured identity. What, then, does it mean to be a Cuban today? Where do we call home? What are the trade-offs and betrayals we make with our choices?”

I have not yet read the excerpt from Prieto’s novel, since (from the back cover of the newly released paperback edition which I bought) “Cristina García has ingeniously grouped her selections according to “the music of their sentences” in to [sic] sections: four named for Cuban dance styles and one for the hybrid known as salsa.” I have chosen to follow her division for a first reading and have not yet reached the excerpt, but I wonder if others on the list are familiar with Prieto’s work (which she places in the hybrid salsa section), specifically this novel, and whether they would be willing to share some observations from a Nabokovian perspective? In return, I promise to post any impressions I form when I do read the excerpt.

On another note, I will say that I could not live without VN’s entire oeuvre, and only wish there were more (I feel the same way about Jane Austen, but not about, say, Dickens). Pale Fire is my personal favorite, for personal reasons on a level of “personalness” I have nowhere else encountered in my literary excursions. I consider Ada to be the master’s most masterful masterpiece, and I hope that no one is continuing to attempt the “great American novel”, because that is Lolita. Bend Sinister was my first introduction to the magic, and will always have a special place in my literary sentiments, but I do feel emphatically that each novel (and story and poem and memoir) is indispensable and that we are extremely lucky to have them. For me they have served as continuing education in literature ! and in life for many years.

Thanks,

Neil Spence