gay Colombian immigrant's adventures among hookers, self-made millionaires, narcotics traffickers and elderly book mavens..." and also stated that "the novel is hardly intended to portray the "typical" immigrant experience."In 1995 he published My Night with Federico García Lorca (Lambda Book Award Finalist), about which John Ashbery said, "Memories of an ecstatic childhood—walks by the sea, 'a happy mambo,' eating deceptive tropical fruits—merge with those of recent loves in these luscious, incantatory poems." In 1997 appeared the novel Twilight at the Equator which Ilan Stavans in The Washington Post called "He is, after all, the most accomplished gay Latino writer of his generation, a picaro prone to shock his readers by testing the moral standards of his time."In 1999 he published Maricones Eminentes (Arenas, Lorca, Puig and Me) for which he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. About Maricones Eminentes Ilan Stavans said in The Washington Post that the book is "his sterling examination, through short narrative lives, of the gender wars in the Hispanic world. ...Posterity is a puzzle, of course. Whether this volume will last I cannot say, but that it should I have no doubt." And Susan Sontag said "A splendid memoir of Manuel Puig. It evokes him—how he really was—better than anything I've read." In 1999 he also The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artist award. In 2006 he published Our lives are the Rivers about which the San Francisco Chronicle wrote "A compelling story that melds history and biography into the context of a passionate love affair, Our Lives Are the Rivers is a masterful piece of historical fiction." The novel received The International Latino Book Award (Best historical novel 2007). In 2012 Manrique published Cervantes Street (Akashic Books, 2012). About the novel The Wall Street Journal said "Cervantes Street is exciting to read...Under Mr. Manrique's pen, the world of renaissance Spain and the Mediterranean is made vivid, its surface cracking with sudden violence and cruelty...This novel can be read as a generous salute across the centuries from one writer to another, as a sympathetic homage and recommendation... Cervantes Street brings to life the real world behind the fantastic exploits of the knight of La Mancha. The comic mishaps are funnier for being based in fact. The romantic adventures are more affecting. Cervantes Street has sent me back to Don Quixote." Junot Díaz said about the novel "A sprawling vivacious big-hearted novel. Manrique is fantastically talented". And