Book Summary and Reviews of The Man Who Loved Dogs by Leonardo Padura

Book Summary

A gripping novel about the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940

In his youth, Iván Cárdenas Maturell was the great promise of modern Cuban literature. But after Iván dared to write a story that was deemed counterrevolutionary, he suffered the consequences and became not just a loser but a defeated man. After two years of obligatory social service, Iván returns to Havana and takes a job editing a veterinary magazine. One afternoon, he meets a mysterious foreigner in the company of two Russian wolfhounds, whom he quickly names "the man who loved dogs."

Their initially superficial exchanges eventually lead to more heartfelt conversations in which Iván discloses his own fears and frustrations and the man who loved dogs admits that he is dying. In the shadow of death, the foreign man feels compelled to relay the details of his life to another person, and confesses to Iván that he is actually Ramón Mercader, the man who killed Leon Trotsky in Mexico City.

Moving seamlessly between Iván's life in Cuba, Mercader's early years in Spain and France, and Trotsky's long years of exile, The Man Who Loved Dogs is Leonardo Padura's most ambitious and brilliantly executed novel yet. It is the story of revolutions fought and betrayed, the ways in which men's political convictions are continually tested and manipulated, and a powerful critique of the role of fear in consolidating political power.