Tropical Animal — Pedro Juan Gutierrez

Pursued by Gloria, a proud and sophisticated prostitute bent on curbing his wandering instincts, Pedro Juan is holed up in his crumbling Havana apartment -- painting, beset by a growing sense of melancholy as he observes the lives of the hustlers, hipsters, and hookers in the city below. An invitation to Sweden -- cold, unwelcoming, the antithesis of Pedro Juan's Cuba -- gives him an official way out. However, once in Europe he finds himself haunted by memories of the passionate Gloria and increasingly uninspired by this new environment. Does Pedro Juan, legendary seducer and sensual explorer, finally have to admit that his game is over, to be replaced by this more balanced, more secure, colder existence?

In his tight, tough prose, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez continues to explore human animalism with a joyous fearlessness absent from much of our contemporary culture and, in so doing, sheds a brilliant new light into the depths and complexities of the soul. With Tropical Animal, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez confirms his status as one of the finest new voices in not only contemporary Latin American literature, but in all of contemporary fiction.