Translation Rights TQE / Autumn Landscape

One autumn night, some fishermen discover a corpse on Chivo Beach, in Havana. The victim, Miguel Forcade Mier has been brutally murdered and abandoned in a nearly indescribable state. This crime will regenerate an old conspiracy loaded with corruption and frustrated ambitions. Forcade had officially been in charge of the expropriation of artistic valuables that had been requisitioned from the middle classes after the revolution. Having accumulated power, influential contacts and possibly a great deal of envy and resentment, in 1978 Forcade decided, for no apparent reason, to seek exile in Miami. However, shortly before his murder, he had inexplicably returned to Cuba, as if to recuperate something very valuable of which only he had knowledge.

Conde is about to turn thirty-six and he senses that a stage in his life is about to end and the moment to make irrevocable decisions is at hand. In that Conde’s adventure, Padura explores the innumerable resources of the detective genre. Throughout this stirring investigation full of clues, misinterpretations and relatively well-founded suspicions, the author recreates the chronicles of a generation which was forced to ask itself with increasing concern where all their ideals had gone. We can also find a masterly portrait of Havana - chaotic yet likeable, luminous yet full of dark secrets, very similar to the characters in this unique story of hidden treasures and not always fortunate romances.

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.