Anna in the Tropics

Blurb

Anna in the Tropics is a play by Nilo Cruz. It won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The play is set in Ybor City, a section of Tampa and the center of the cigar industry. When Cuban immigrants brought the cigar-making industry to Florida in the 19th century, they carried with them another tradition. As the workers toiled away in the factory hand rolling each cigar, the lector, would read to them. It was the lector who informed, organized and entertained the workers until the 1930s, when the rollers and the readers were replaced by mechanization.
In the play, the lector reads Anna Karenina, sparking the characters' lives and relationships to spin out of control.