LoveReading Says
A Maxim Jakubowski selected title.
A significant departure for the Cuban creator of the wonderful Mario Conde Havana mysteries, this sweeping historical novel about the assassination of Leon Trotsky alternates its points of view between the communist leader, his killer Ramon Mercader and a writer now revisiting the case. Under cover of a crime investigation, Padura manages to summon an injection of fresh breath into the winds of history in a well-known tale and slice of history, with a clear and unprejudiced survey of the struggles between Stalin and Trotsky, the political background of the Spanish civil war (with a cameo by George Orwell...) and a host of actual events and turns the dry bones of history into a blazing unputdownable read. A lengthy book but well worth the effort.
Maxim Jakubowski
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The Man Who Loved Dogs Synopsis
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 Ramón Mercader.
The story revolves around Iván Cárdenas 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, Iván 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, Iván begins to understand that his new friend is hiding a terrible secret.
Moving seamlessly between Iván's life in Cuba, Ramón'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, Ramón in pursuit, Iván 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.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780374535070 |
| Publication date: |
6th January 2015 |
| Author: |
Leonardo Padura |
| Publisher: |
Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
592 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Historical Fiction
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| Recommendations: |
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