“The Man Who Loved Dogs, by Cuban author Leonardo Padura, is a stunning novel, chronicling the evisceration of the Communist dream and one of the most “ruthless, calculated and useless” crimes in history. All credit to Bitter Lemon … for publishing such a readable English translation...There can be few more insightful explorations of the ways in which communism corroded the human spirit and justified the most monstrous of crimes.” - Financial Times
Cuban writer Iván Cárdenas Maturell 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 Ramón Mercader, the man who killed Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940, and that he is now living in a secret exile in Cuba after being released from jail in Mexico.
Moving seamlessly between Iván’s life in Cuba, Mercader’s early years in Spain and France, and Trotsky’s long years of exile, The Man Who Loved Dogs is Leonardo Padura’s most ambitious and brilliantly executed novel yet. It is the story of revolutions fought and betrayed, the ways in which men’s political convictions are continually tested and manipulated, and a powerful critique of the role of fear in consolidating political power.
