The Transparency of Time (Mario Conde Investigates, No. 9) (First American Edition)

Padura, Leonardo

ISBN 10: 0374277958 / ISBN 13: 9780374277956

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2021

About this Item

New York, FSG, 2021. First American edition. First printing (with full number line including 1). Fine in a fine jacket. A clean tight copy. Publisher's price intact on front jacket flap ($30.00). Comes with archival-quality mylar jacket protector. Padura is best known in the for his quartet of detective novels featuring lieutenant Mario Conde. Collectively titled Las cuatro estaciones (The four seasons), they are sometimes called The Havana Quartet in their English translations. These books are set respectively in winter, spring, summer and autumn: Pasado perfecto (1991, translated as Havana Blue, 2007); Vientos de cuaresma (1994, translated as Havana Gold, 2008); Máscaras (1997, translated as Havana Red, 2005); and Paisaje de otoño (1998, translated as Havana Black, 2006). Padura published five subsequent books featuring Conde, the novella Adiós Hemingway, La neblina del ayer (The Fog of Yesterday, published in English as Havana Fever); La Cola de la Serpiente (Grab a Snake by the Tail); Herejes (Heretics); and this novel, La Transparencia del Tiempo (The Transparency of Time).

Seller Inventory # Literature-Cuban-Padura

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Transparency of Time (Mario Conde Investigates, No. 9) (First American Edition)
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374277958
• ISBN 13: 9780374277956
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Cuban Literature

About this title

Synopsis

From Leonardo Padura―whose crime novels featuring Detective Mario Conde form the basis of Netflix’s Four Seasons in Havana―The Transparency of Time sees the Cuban investigator pursuing a mystery spanning centuries of occult history.

Mario Conde is facing down his sixtieth birthday. What does he have to show for his decades on the planet? A failing body, a slower mind, and a decrepit country, in which both the ideals and failures of the Cuban Revolution are being swept away in favor of a new and newly cosmopolitan worship of money.

Rescue comes in the form of a new case: an old Marxist turned flamboyant practitioner of Santería appears on the scene to engage Conde to track down a stolen statue of the Virgen de Regla―a black Madonna. This sets Conde on a quest that spans twenty-first century Havana as well as the distant past, as he delves as far back as the Crusades in an attempt to uncover the true provenance of the statue.

Through vignettes from the life of a Catalan peasant named Antoni Barral, who appears throughout history in different guises―as a shepherd during the Spanish Civil War, as vassal to a feudal lord―we trace the Madonna to present-day Cuba. With Barral serving as Conde’s alter ego, unstuck in time, and Conde serving as the author’s, we are treated to a panorama of history, and reminded of the impossibility of ever remaining on its sidelines, no matter how obscure we may think our places in the action.

Equal parts The Name of the Rose and The Maltese Falcon, The Transparency of Time cements Leonardo Padura’s position as the preeminent literary crime writer of our time.

About the Authors

Leonardo Padura was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1955. A novelist, journalist, and critic, he is the author of several novels, two volumes of short stories, and several nonfiction collections. His novels featuring the detective Mario Conde have been translated into many languages and have won literary prizes around the world. The Man Who Loved Dogs was a finalist for the Book of the Year Award in Spain. Padura lives in Havana.

The daughter of Cuban exiles, Anna Kushner was born in Philadelphia and has been traveling to Cuba since 1999. She has translated the novels of Norberto Fuentes, Guillermo Rosales, and Gonçalo M. Tavares. She has also translated works by Marcial Gala, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Leonardo Padura, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.