Translation Rights TQE / Heretics

In 1939, the S.S. Saint Louis, a ship carrying nine hundred Jews who had managed to escape from Germany, remained anchored in Havana’s harbor for several days awaiting permission to disembark its passengers. Daniel Kaminsky, a child at the time, and his uncle waited at the quay for their family to step off the ship, trusting that the hidden treasure in their possession, a small canvas attributed to Rembrandt which had accompanied the Kaminskys since the 17^th century, would be their safe-conduct. But the plan failed and the ship returned to Germany, thus destroying any hope of a reunion. Many years later, in 2007, when the same canvas is to be auctioned in London, Elias, Daniel’s son, travels from the United States to Havana in an attempt to clarify what became of the painting and of his family. Only someone like Mario Conde will be able to help him, and Elias will discover that Daniel was tormented by a crime. He will also learn that the man depicted by Rembrandt as Christ in the lost canvas was, in fact, another Jew, one that risked it all to work in Rembrandt’s workshop and learn the trade at the side of the master.  

Leonardo Padura was born in Havana in 1955. He obtained a degree in Spanish Language and Literature from the University of Havana, and has worked as a scriptwriter, journalist, and critic. He is the author of essays, collections of short stories, and of La novela de mi vida (The Novel of My Life) about the poet José María Heredia, but is best known for his series of crime novels starring Detective Mario Conde. These have been translated into many languages, and have won prestigious literary awards such as the Café Gijón Prize in 1995, the Hammett Prize for best crime novel in 1997, 1998, and 2005, the Premio de las Islas, in 2000, in France, the Brigada 21 Prize to the best novel of the year, as well as several editions of the Cuban Critics Prize and the National Prize for Novel in 1993. The Mario Conde series, acclaimed by readers and critics alike, is thus far made up of six novels: Pasado perfecto (Past Perfect), Vientos de cuaresma (Lenten Winds), Máscaras (Masks), Paisaje de otoño (Autumn Landscape), Adiós, Hemingway (Good-bye, Hemingway) and La neblina del ayer (The Mist of Yesterday). In all of them, “el Conde” investigates cases that bring the reader to the heart of contemporary Cuba.