Leonardo Padura

Havana's Chinatown is not his usual beat, but when Conde is asked to take a murder case by the sultry, perfectly proportioned Police Lieutenant Patricia Chion, a frequent object of his nightly fantasies, he can’t resist. Pedro Cuang is found hanging naked from a beam in the ceiling of his dingy room. One of his fingers has been cut off, and the outline of two arrows was carved with a knife on his chest. Was this a ritual Santería killing or a just a sordid settling of accounts in a world of drug trafficking beginning to infiltrate Cuba in the 1980s? Soon Conde discovers unexpected connections, secret businesses and a history of misfortune, uprooting and loneliness that affected many immigrant families from China. The Barrio Chino was once one of the largest Chinatowns in the West. Now it feels like a ghetto of uprooted families, with its derelict cemetery and boarded-up shops. The story is soaked in atmosphere: African spells cast by babalao sorcerers, deliciously smoke-filled bars, deep friendships, and beautiful women. Especially the exotic Afro-Chinese Patricia Chion.

"Padura's Heretics spans and defies literary categories . . . ingenious." --Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air A sweeping novel of art theft, anti-Semitism, contemporary Cuba, and crime from a renowned Cuban author, Heretics is Leonardo Padura's greatest detective work yet. In 1939, the Saint Louis sails from Hamburg into Havana's port with hundreds of Jewish refugees seeking asylum from the Nazi regime. From the docks, nine-year-old Daniel Kaminsky watches as the passengers, including his mother, father, and sister, become embroiled in a fiasco of Cuban corruption. But the Kaminskys have a treasure that they hope will save them: a small Rembrandt portrait of Christ. Yet six days later the vessel is forced to leave the harbor with the family, bound for the horrors of Europe. The Kaminskys, along with their priceless heirloom, disappear. Nearly seven decades later, the Rembrandt reappears in an auction house in London, prompting Daniel's son to travel to Cuba to track down the story of his family's lost masterpiece. He hires the down-on-his-luck private detective Mario Conde, and together they navigate a web of deception and violence in the morally complex city of Havana. In Heretics, Leonardo Padura takes us from the tenements and beaches of Cuba to Rembrandt's gloomy studio in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, telling the story of people forced to choose between the tenets of their faith and the realities of the world, between their personal desires and the demands of their times. A grand detective story and a moving historical drama, Padura's novel is as compelling, mysterious, and enduring as the painting at its center.

Retired Havana police inspector Mario Conde is back. A sweeping novel of art theft, anti-Semitism, contemporary Cuba, and crime from a renowned Cuban author.

El universo habanero de las novelas de Leonardo Padura ya es inconfundible, pero hasta ahora sus numerosos relatos nunca se habian recogido en un solo volumen. Son historias magnificas de soldados que vuelven de Angola a La Habana y recalan en Madrid, de jovenes estudiantes seducidos por boleros y por cantantes de antiguo esplendor, relatos de amor y erotismo, de amistad y de descubrimientos, o de formacion en la atmosfera caribena de una ciudad cargada de personajes y de vidas por contar.

Una evocaci n viv sima del Romanticismo en el Caribe de la poca colonial, pero por encima de todo una lectura de la historia de Cuba, un viaje al origen de su conciencia nacional a trav s de la vida de su primer gran poeta. Tras dieciocho a os en el exilio, Fernando Terry decide volver por un mes a La Habana, atra do por la posibilidad de dar al fin con la autobiograf a desaparecida del poeta Jos Mar a Heredia, al que dedic su tesis doctoral. De paso, aclarar de una vez las sospechas, que han ido alimentando su rencor, de qui n lo denunci y provoc la expulsi n de su puesto en la universidad. A la historia de ese reencuentro y a la busca del codiciado manuscrito, titulado precisamente La novela de mi vida, se suman alternativamente dos planos temporales m s: el de la vida de Heredia a comienzos del siglo XIX, en los a os de la Colonia, y el de los ltimos d as de su hijo Jos de Jes s de Heredia, mas n, a principios del XX. La novela de mi vida, una viv sima evocaci n del Romanticismo en El Caribe, constituye un viaje al origen de la conciencia nacional de Cuba a trav s de la vida de su primer gran poeta: Jos Mar a Heredia. ENGLISH DESCRIPTIONA very vivid evocation of Romanticism in the Caribbean of the colonial era, but above all a reading of the history of Cuba, a journey to the origin of its national consciousness through the life of its first great poet. After eighteen years in exile, Fernando Terry decided to return to Havana for a month, attracted by the possibility of finally finding the disappeared autobiography of the poet Jos Mar a Heredia, to whom he dedicated his doctoral thesis. In passing, he will clarify once and for all the suspicions, which have been fueling his resentment, of who denounced him and caused the expulsion from his position at the university. To the story of this reunion and the search for the coveted manuscript, entitled precisely La novela de mi vida (The Novel of My Life), two more temporal planes are added alternately: that of Heredia's life at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in the years of the Colony, and that of the last days of his son Jos de Jes s de Heredia. Freemason, at the beginning of the twentieth century. The novel of my life, a vivid evocation of Romanticism in the Caribbean, is a journey to the origin of Cuba's national consciousness through the life of its first great poet: Jos Mar a Heredia.

A gripping novel about the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940 In The Man Who Loved Dogs, Leonardo Padura brings a noir sensibility to one of the most fascinating and complex political narratives of the past hundred years: the assassination of Leon Trotsky by Ram n Mercader. The story revolves around Iv n C rdenas Maturell, who in his youth was the great hope of modern Cuban literature--until he dared to write a story that was deemed counterrevolutionary. When we meet him years later in Havana, Iv n is a loser: a humbled and defeated man with a quiet, unremarkable life who earns his modest living as a proofreader at a veterinary magazine. One afternoon, he meets a mysterious foreigner in the company of two Russian wolfhounds. This is "the man who loved dogs," and as the pair grow closer, Iv n begins to understand that his new friend is hiding a terrible secret. Moving seamlessly between Iv n's life in Cuba, Ram n's early years in Spain and France, and Trotsky's long years of exile, The Man Who Loved Dogs is Padura's most ambitious and brilliantly executed novel yet. This is a story about political ideals tested and characters broken, a multilayered epic that effortlessly weaves together three different plot threads-- Trotsky in exile, Ram n in pursuit, Iv n in frustrated stasis--to bring emotional truth to historical fact. A novel whose reach is matched only by its astonishing successes on the page, The Man Who Loved Dogs lays bare the human cost of abstract ideals and the insidious, corrosive effects of life under a repressive political regime.

Med dundrende hodepine våkner politietterforsker Mario Conde etter en særdeles fuktig nyttårsaften av at telefonen ringer. Det er sjefen. Conde blir innkalt til stasjonen med det samme. En høyt plassert leder i det cubanske industriministeriet, Rafael Morin, har forsvunnet på uforklarlig vis, og de har ikke ett minutt å miste. Romanene syder av Cuba, rom og svette. Leonardo Padura blander et fantastisk plot med en betagende atmosfære. Det er nesten så man kjenner duften av sigar, rom og forførende kvinner. "Vinter i Havana er en vakker bok om de store temaene døden og kjærligheten. Nå venter vi på mer." - Fredrik Wandrup, Dagbladet.

This is the first of the Havana quartet featuring Lieutenant Mario Conde, a tropical Marlowe. A body is found in a Havana park. A young transvestite dressed in a beautiful red evening dress, strangled. The victim had fled his family, finding refuge with Marques, an author living alone surrounded only by books, his house in ruins. In the baking heat of the Havana summer Conde investigates, moving through a Cuban reality where nothing is what it seems. Padura's masterful prose and eye for detail evoke the Havana that millions of tourists have come to know: crumbling architecture, peeling paintwork and a pulsating, searing sensuality beneath the tropical sun.

Havanna im Herbst 1989: Fischer entdecken am Strand eine Leiche. Wie sich herausstellt, war der Tote ein hoher Funktionär der kubanischen Regierung, bis er sich vor elf Jahren in die USA absetzte. Damals zuständig für die Enteignung der Bourgeoisie, hatte er sich viele Feinde geschaffen. Warum kehrte er nach Kuba zurück? Wollte er wirklich nur seinen schwer kranken Vater besuchen? Oder gab es einen anderen Grund? Im vierten Teil des Havanna-Quartetts begegnet Teniente Mario Conde abgehalfterten Funktionären und den alten Familien, die viel, aber längst nicht alles verloren haben. Während der Hurrikan F?lix unbarmherzig auf Havanna zurast, fühlt Mario Conde, dass ein wichtiger Abschnitt seines Lebens zu Ende geht. ? Originalton Kuba: elegisch und rebellisch.? Buchjournal ? Die drohende Naturkatastrophe, die alle gesellschaftlichen Auseinandersetzungen vorübergehend auf null setzen wird, die Lebenskrise einer Generation, die dunklen Seiten der kubanischen Revolution, die unglückliche Liebe und die Verzweiflung, Leonardo Padura führt im vierten Band noch einmal die Elemente zusammen, die den Reiz seiner Tetralogie ausmachen.? Tobias Gohlis, Die Zeit ? Wunderschön, hochintelligent, tiefmelancholisch. Das beste, was derzeit auf dem Krimimarkt zu haben ist.? Andreas Ammer, Bayerischer Rundfunk - KrimiWelt-Jahresbestenliste 2005: ? Das Meer der Illusionen? ? Labyrinth der Masken? - KrimiWelt-Bestenliste September, Oktober und November 2005: 1. bzw. 3. Platz für ? Das Meer der Illusionen?

Im dichten Unterholz des Bosque de La Habana wird am 6. August, am Tag der Verklärung Jesu, die Leiche eines Transvestiten gefunden. Als sich herausstellt, dass es sich bei dem Toten um Alexis Aray?n handelt, den Sohn eines angesehenen kubanischen Diplomaten, will sich bei der Polizei keiner die Finger verbrennen. Nur Mario Conde, für sechs Monate zum Erkennungsdienst strafversetzt, ist froh, nicht mehr länger Karteikarten ausfüllen zu müssen, und springt ohne zu zögern ein. Seine Ermittlungen führen ihn zu Marqu?s, einem exzentrischen und legendären Theaterregisseur, der als Homosexueller geächtet in einem zerfallenden Haus lebt. Kultiviert, intelligent und mit feiner Ironie begabt, führt dieser Conde in eine verborgene Welt ein und treibt gleichzeitig ein listiges Verwirrspiel.