Havana Lunar

One hungry, hallucinatory night in the dark heart of Havana, Mano Rodriguez, a young doctor with the revolutionary medical service, comes to the aid of a teenage *jinetera* named Julia. She takes refuge in his clinic to break away from the abusive *chulo* who prostituted her, and they form an unlikely allegiance that Mano thinks might save him from his twin burdens: the dead-end hospital assignment he was delegated after being blacklisted by the Cuban Communist Party and a Palo Monte curse on his love life commissioned by a vengeful ex-wife. But when the pimp and his bodyguards come after Julia and Mano, the violent chain-reaction plunges them all into the decadent catacombs of Havana's criminal underworld.

Inspired by fifty years of Cuban literary noir, from *Cold Tales *by Virgilio Piñera to Reinaldo Arenas’ *Before Night Falls*, Robert Arellano’s *Havana Lunar *intertwines an insider testimony on the collapse of socialist Cuba with a psychological mystery.