Kirjahaku

It is 1929 in the town of Tampa, Florida. In the run-down cigar factory, owned and operated by Cuban exiles, the cigars are still rolled by hand and 'lectors' are employed to read to the workforce while they roll. The arrival of a handsome new lector straight off the boat from Cuba is a cause for celebration - at least by the daughters of the owner. But when he begins to read aloud from his favourite novel, Anna Karenina, he unwittingly becomes a catalyst in the lives of his avid listeners, for whom Tolstoy, the tropical heat and the American dream prove a volatile combination...

Cruz was the first Hispanic-Latino artist to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2003. This volume includes the award-winning play, as well as four other selections.

"The poetry of Cruz's writing is what those who love his work cite most often about his style, and "Sotto Voce "has that. Yet it also contains passages that are realistic, whimsical, sensual and heartbreaking. Cruz may be that rarity, a poet of the stage, but he is first and foremost a dramatist." "The Miami Herald"Ariel Strauss, a Jewish Cuban man, strives to explore his cultural history when he encounters Bemadette Kahn, an older woman and famed novelist who seeks to relive hers. Cruz's passionate romantic drama takes place in a dreamscape, somewhere between history and memory, present and past. "Sotto Voce "is a work of dramatic poetry and an imaginative exploration of nostalgia and the ensuing heartbreak it comes with.Nilo Cruz was the first Latino playwright to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play "Anna in the Tropics." His other plays include "Night Train to Bolina," "Dancing on her Knees," "A Park in Our House," "Two Sisters and a Piano," "The Color of Desire, Hurricane, A Bicycle Country," "Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams," "Lorca in a Green Dress," "Beauty of the Father," and translations of Lorca's "Dona Rosita the Spinster "and "The House of Bernarda Alba." He is the third recipient of the Greenfield Prize, a $30,000 grant to produce new work."

After Millie's husband Lorenzo dies in a car crash, his heart is used to save a young man's life. Unable to let go of this final living piece of her husband, Millie reaches out to the transplant recipient, Am r, with the hope that some part of the heart still carries Lorenzo's memories. As Am r ponders the ways in which this new heart is transforming him, he becomes entangled in the lives of Millie and her family, trapped by longings and obsessions that are not his own. Exquisite Agony is a play about the heart--its passions, its failures, and its ability to connect.