Havana, Year Zero

1993. In Cuba — the peak of the "special period", a large-scale economic crisis that arose after the collapse of the USSR. Empty shelves in stores, frequent power outages and water shortages, disruptions in transportation, and mass unemployment became commonplace.

According to Julia, a mathematics teacher who had to give up her dreams of a scientific career to earn a living, a year zero has come to Havana — a starting point, the lowest possible point, beyond which lies complete uncertainty.

Desperate to regain control over her own life, the protagonist teams up with her colleague and former lover Euclid to find a document confirming that it was actually Antonio Meucci, not Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone in Havana. She believes that this discovery will fundamentally change her life.

Together with a group of like-minded individuals driven by a Quixotic goal — Angel, the ex-husband of the woman who once owned the coveted document, Leonardo, the author of a novel about Meucci, and Barbara, an Italian journalist interested in contemporary Cuban literature — Julia will have to untangle a complicated and mysterious family history during a period of national despair in Cuba.

"Havana, Year Zero" is a vivid and ironic novel, not devoid of Cuban color, where the story of people's fates, trying to survive at any cost in an era of change, is skillfully woven into an intriguing detective investigation.