Leonardo Padura, the Cuban-born crime writer, is interviewed in The Independent.

Padura was born in Havana in 1955. He studied in Havana and remained in Cuba throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, when the country underwent an economic crisis as Russian aid disappeared. Padura became a journalist, writing a popular column and editing the leading cultural magazine, La Gazeta de Cuba. He wrote short stories and essays, but first found international recognition with the Havana Quartet of crime novels featuring Inspector Mario Conde (Bitter Lemon), the latest of which is Havana Gold. Padura has won numerous awards, including the Spanish award for detective fiction, the Premio Hammett. He still lives in Havana, in the barrio where he grew up, with his wife, the journalist Lucia Lopez Coll.