J. is a smuggler living on the fringes between Eastern and Western Europe, making his living fencing the flotsam of communism's collapse. He has taken a commission to illegally trap a rare Russian butterfly, and decides to use it as an opportunity to smuggle V., his Russian lover who has no papers, back into her homeland. Just over the border in the port of Odessa, she deserts him, so J. continues alone to their original destination, a small village on the Black Sea. Then she begins to send him letters, and he waits, searching for the answer that will lure the butterfly into his net and V. back into his life.
Equal parts bittersweet love story, international intrigue, and one man's quest to write the perfect love letter, this book marks out Jose Manuel Prieto as one of the most exciting new Latin American novelists and a writer of international stature.
