The man who loved dogs

Leonardo Padura, Bitter Lemon Press, 576 pages, hardback, £20

A historical detective story set in the late 1970s, this book follows Cuban writer Ivan Cardenas Maturell who 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 eventually confesses that he is actually Ramon Mercader, the man who killed Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940, and that he is now living in secret exile in Cuba after being released from jail in Mexico. 

The story weaves a rich intellectual mystery, jumping between turbulent France, the Spanish civil war and Trotsky’s long exile.

Padura uses the gift of any great novelist by conveying his characters as living human beings for whom we can feel pity and fear.

It is a literary masterpiece worthy of being as acclaimed here as it was across Europe when it was first published.

This is Padura’s most ambitious novel. It is the story of revolutions fought and betrayed, the ways in which political convictions are continually tested and manipulated and a powerful critique of the role of fear in consolidating political power.

Now translated into English for the first time it is a monumental piece of work.

Reviews contributed by the Bookmarks socialist bookshop. Order online at www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk