Leonardo Padura is a Cuban novelist and journalist who is best known for writing the Mario Conde series of detective novels. He was awarded the national Prize for Literature by his home country in 2012. He was also awarded with the Premio Principe de Asturias de las Letras of Spain, which is one of the most important literary prizes in the Spanish-speaking world and considered on par with the Nobel Prize.

Padura earned his degree in Latin American literature from the University of Havana. After college, he went to work as an investigative journalist for a magazine called Caimán Barbudo. In addition to his work as an author and journalist, Padura has also written screenplays.

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Publication Order of Mario Conde Books

Havana Blue (1991)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Havana Gold (1994)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Havana Red (1997)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Havana Black (1998)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Havana Fever (2005)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Adios Hemingway (2006)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Heretics (2013)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Grab a Snake by the Tail (2018)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
The Transparency of Time (2021)Description / Buy at Amazon.com

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

The Man Who Loved Dogs (2009)Description / Buy at Amazon.com

Publication Order of Anthologies

Kill the Ámpaya!: The Best Latin American Baseball Fiction(2017)Description / Buy at Amazon.com
Cuba on the Verge(2017)Description / Buy at Amazon.com

If You Like Books, You’ll Love…

The Mario Conde series begins with Havana Red. The book takes place in Cuba where a young transvestite in a beautiful red dress has been found strangled in Havana park. Conde is put on the case of investigating the violent murder and ends up exposing a corrupt society where nothing is truly as it seems. Padura builds dark and fascinating world of the people born in the revolution where everyone is seeking identity in the midst of disaster.

The Man Who Loved Dogs is a gripping novel about the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940. The story follows a Cuban named Iván Cárdenas Maturell who was thought to be the next great Cuban literature writer until he wrote something that was deemed to be counterrevolutionary. Instead of a great literary career, he ends up as a proofreader at a veterinary magazine. He meets a foreigner one day with two Russian wolfhounds, he is the man who loves dogs. As their friendship grows, Ivan finds that his new friend is hiding a terrible secret.

Order of Books » Authors » Order of Leonardo Padura Books

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