Translation Rights TQE / The Gentleman from Saint Petersburg

At the end of the 18th Century, the young Creole woman Antonia de Salis lives with her cousin Teresa in Crimea. It is there that they receive a visit from a fascinating Latin American soldier, Francisco de Miranda, forerunner of the independence that stirs the colonies, who is visiting Russia to forge an alliance with Potemkin. Antonia is completely seduced by this idealist and passionate character who has a reputation for being a Don Juan and who is a wonderful story teller with the dames. She feels so strongly that, alter a few furtive encounters, she decides to follow him to Saint Petersburg, unaware that he is being hunted down by a Spanish diplomat determined to capture him. Thirty years later in a prison in Cádiz, an ill General Miranda, who has been betrayed and abandoned by everyone, will receive the visits and the care of a mysterious woman.

Basing her story on real facts, Mayra Montero invites us along on a fascinating journey to Europe at the end of the Old Regime and to the America of Independence, through the battles and political wars that serve as a framework for the lives of her characters. An intriguing love story, full of adventures, that also narrates the sentimental education of an independent and courageous woman.

Mayra Montero was born in Havana in 1952 and has lived in Puerto Rico for over thirty years. She is the author of the erotic novels La última noche que pasé contigo (The Last Night I Spent with You, finalist for the XIII Sonrisa Vertical Prize in 1991) and Púrpura profundo (Deep Purple, XXII Sonrisa Vertical Prize in 2000), as well as of the novels Del rojo de su sombra (From the Red of His Shadow, 1993), Tú, la oscuridad (You, the Darkness, 1995), which established her internationally as a writer after being published in the United States, Como un mensajero tuyo (As Your Messenger, 1998), El capitán de los dormidos (The Captain of the Sleeping, 2002), and Son de almendra (Almond Song, 2006).