Exuberant and colorful, Latin Moon in Manhattan paints a vivid portrait of New York City as the land of El Dorado for today’s Latino immigrants. From Little Colombia in Queens to the street life of Times Square, this brilliant novel is crowded with an extraordinary cast of characters: Hot Sauce, a midget hooker; Simon Bolivar, a parrot who croons Julio Iglesias songs; the Urrutias, a family rich from cocaine smuggling; Santiago Martinez, a loner and would-be poet whose ancient cat, Mr. O’Donnell, is slowly dying of an enlarged heart. Exploding with a profusion of plots and subplots involving drug smuggling, romance, and the literary politics of Queens, Latin Moon in Manhattan is a rich and utterly charming work.

Jaime Manrique is the author of the memoir Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press, the novels Twilight at the Equator and Colombian Gold, and two poetry collections, My Night with Federico García Lorca and Tarzan, My Body, Christopher Columbus. He is cotranslator, with Joan Larkin, of Sor Juana’s Love Poems. He lives in New York City and is an associate professor in the MFA program at Columbia University.