The Transparency of Time
About this eBook
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 Santería 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 from the Crusades to present day Havana, by way of the Spanish Civil War. He must uncover the true provenance of the Madonna and solve the two murders triggered by the theft of the statue.
About the author
Leonaro Padura lives in Havana and is Cuba's best known author of fiction. His "Havana Quartet" featuring police inspector Mario Conde has been made into a TV series, a radio dramatisation, and been translated all over the world. "The Man Who Loved Dogs" is his masterpiece and ahs been widely acclaimed.
Anna Kushner was born in Philadelphia and is a prize-winning translator from the Spanish. She has translated the work of Guillermo Rosales as well as two other Padura novels: "Heretics" and "The Man Who Loved Dogs".
