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.
Cuban writer Ivan Cardena Maturell meets a mysterious foreigner on a Havana beach who is always in the company of two Russian wolfhounds. Ivan quickly names him 'the man who loved dogs'. The man confesses that he is Ramon Mercader, the man who killed Leon Trotsky in Mexico City, and that he is now in secret exile in Cuba. This is Leonardo Padura's most brilliantly executed novel yet. It is the story of revolutions fought and betrayed, the ways in which political convictions are continually tested, and a critique of the role of fear in consolidating power.
