The Transparency of Time - Couverture souple

Padura, Leonardo

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1913394573 ISBN 13 : 9781913394578

Editeur : Bitter Lemon Press, 2021

Synopsis

Mario Conde is facing down his sixtieth birthday. What does he have to show for his decades on the planet? A failing body, a slower mind, and a decrepit country, in which both the ideals and failures of the Cuban Revolution are being swept away in favour of a new and newly cosmopolitan worship of money.

Rescue comes in the form of a new case: an old Marxist turned flamboyant practitioner of Santeria appears on the scene to engage Conde to track down a stolen statue of the Virgen de Regla - a black Madonna. This sets Conde on a quest that spans twenty-first century Havana as well as the distant past, as he delves as far back as the Crusades in an attempt to uncover the true provenance of the statue.

Through vignettes from the life of a Catalan peasant named Antoni Barral, who appears throughout history in different guises - as a shepherd during the Spanish Civil War, as vassal to a feudal lord - we trace the Madonna to present-day Cuba. With Barral serving as Conde's alter ego, unstuck in time, and Conde serving as the author's, we are treated to a panorama of history, and reminded of the impossibility of ever remaining on its sidelines, no matter how obscure we may think our places in the action.

Equal parts The Name of the Rose and The Maltese Falcon, The Transparency of Time cements Leonardo Padura's position as the preeminent literary crime writer of our time.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Leonardo Padura was born in Havana in 1955 and lives there with his wife Lucia. A novelist, journalist, and critic, he is the author of several novels, one collection of essays, and a volume of short stories. His Havana series crime novels featuring the detective Mario Conde, published in English by Bitter Lemon Press, have been translated into many languages and have won literary prizes around the world. To quote Padura: "I bury myself in Cuba deeply so that I can express what Cuba is, and I have not left Cuba because I am a Cuban writer and I can't be anything else."

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Bitter Lemon Press
• Date d'édition: 2021
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1913394573
• ISBN 13: 9781913394578
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 432
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Buchpark GmbH; gpsr@buchpark.de; ; Krügerweg 1; Trebbin; Brandenburg; 14959; Allemagne