Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. A poignant and poetic new play set in 1929 in a Cuban-American cigar factory where cigars are still rolled by hand and "lectors" are employed to educate and entertain the workers. The arrival of a new lector is cause for celebration when he begins to read aloud from Anna Karenina, he unwittingly becomes the catalyst in the lives of his avid listeners, for whom Tolstoy, the tropics and the American dream prove a volatile combination.