In 1939, the S.S. Saint Louis spent several days anchored at Havana while waiting for the Cuban authorities to allow 900 Jewish refugees from Germany into their country. Confident that a painting by Rembrandt that had belonged to their family since the 17th century--and which they had smuggled on board the ship--would convince the Cubans to let them in, little Daniel Kaminsky and his uncle waited at the dock for their relatives to disembark. But the...

En la tupida arboleda del Bosque de La Habana aparece un 6 de agosto, día en que la Iglesia celebra la transfiguración de Jesús, el cuerpo de un travesti con el lazo de seda roja de la muerte aún al cuello. Para mayor zozobra del Conde, aquella mujer "sin los beneficios de la naturaleza", vestida de rojo, resulta ser Alexis Arayán, hijo de un respetado diplomático del régimen cubano. La investigación se inicia con la visita del Conde al impresionante...

When a human skeleton is discovered on Ernest Hemingway's home in Havana, police inspector Mario Conde is called up out of retirement to unearth the truth. In the course of his investigations, Conde gradually reconstructs the mysterious goings-on of the night of 3rd October 1958 and in doing so is forced to come to terms with a very different side to the character of his former literary hero. Padura Fuentes cuts between Conde's world and that of Hemingway's...

When Lieutenant Conde is roused from a terrible hangover and asked to investigate the disappearance of an old schoolmate that married the girl of his dreams, his desire for her threatens the already-sensitive investigation.

"The first of the Havana quartet featuring Lieutenant Mario Conde, a tropical Marlowe. A body is found in a Havana park. A young transvestite dressed in a beautiful red evening dress, strangled. The victim had fled his family, finding refuge with Marqués, an author living alone surrounded only by books, his house in ruins. In the baking heat of the Havana summer Conde investigates, moving through a Cuban reality where nothing is what is seems. Padura's...

Twelve journalists and writers examine politics and art, music and baseball, present and past, and offer a snapshot of the particular crossroads at which Cuba finds itself. Un libro de crónicas cubanas de la mano de doce de los más prestigiosos periodistas y escritores de nuestro tiempo que abarca política y arte, música y béisbol, presente y pasado, y nos ofrecen una excepcional instantánea de la particular encrucijada en la que se encuentra...