Translation Rights TQE / Masks

In the dense undergrowth of the Havana Forest on the 6th of August, the day in which the Church celebrates the Transfiguration of Jesus, the corpse of a transvestite is discovered, with a red silk ribbon of death around her neck. To add to Conde’s investigation difficulties, this “woman” dressed in red, who is “without the benefits of nature”, is actually Alexis Arayán, the son of a respected diplomat of the Cuban regime. The investigation begins with Conde’s visit to the extraordinary Marqués, a man of letters and the theatre, a homosexual who has been exiled within his own country to a ruined old mansion. Marqués is described as an eccentric wizard, a saint-like, cultured, intelligent and astute man, ironic and tremendously refined. Conde gradually enters the seedy world into which Marqués introduces him, a world inhabited by beings who appear to know the whole truth about Alexis Arayán... But within such a labyrinth, where will Conde find his own truth?

Máscaras is part of a tetralogy of detective novels featuring lieutenant Conde, a solitary and disillusioned man, sanctioned at his headquarters for a previous insubordination, but who is called back to work in order to investigate the strangest and most obscure cases. Through this likeable character and the genre which encompasses him, Padura presents us with a vast horizon: his stories trace a chiaroscuro of both the small triumphs and the great adversities of daily life in contemporary Cuba and, in passing, submit it to a brilliant and profound scrutiny.

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.