Name: Heretics
SKU: 49909929
Price: 28.45 EUR
Availability: InStock
Author: Leonardo Padura
ISBN: 9780374537395

Type

Physical Book

Author

Leonardo Padura

Translated by

Anna Kushner

Publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Language

English

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

20.8x14x3.8 cm

Weight

0.41 kg.

ISBN13

9780374537395

Synopsis "Heretics"

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.

Leonardo Padura

(Author)

View Author's Page

Graduated in Philology from the university of this city, he has worked as a screenwriter, journalist, and critic. He is the author of the novels La novela de mi vida, about the figure of the poet José María Heredia, and El hombre que amaba a los perros, an internationally acclaimed success in which he reconstructs the lives of Trotsky and Ramón Mercader. He has gained recognition especially for the series of detective novels featuring detective Mario Conde: Pasado perfecto, Vientos de cuaresma, Máscaras, Paisaje de otoño, Adiós, Hemingway, La neblina del ayer and La cola de la serpiente, translated into numerous languages and winners of awards such as the Café Gijón 1995, the Hammett Award 1997, 1998 and 2005, the Islands Award 2000, in France, and the Brigada 21. He has also written the novel, Herejes --winner of the Historical Novel Award City of Zaragoza and finalist of the French Médicis and Fémina awards--, La novela de mi vida, the book of stories Aquello estaba deseando ocurrir and El hombre que amaba a los perros, a thrilling reconstruction of the lives of Trotsky and Ramón Mercader, translated into ten languages, its film rights sold and winner, among others, of the Critics' Award in Cuba. In 2012, Padura received the National Literature Award of Cuba. In 2015, he was awarded the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature 2015.

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