|
Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
|
Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
Another difficult, downbeat, alcohol-fuelled, existentially-challenged detective: this time, a Cuban. Mario Conde is a policeman in a Havana force that is facing a period of change and uncertainty. He has decided to resign from the police, and this is his last case. The crime concerns the murky murder of a former corrupt state official charged with expropriating the property of the wealthy Cubans who fled the Castro regime in the early 1960s. But this is in some ways a diversion from the main business of the book, the portrayal of Conde and his tight band of old friends trying to survive and retain the warmth of human relationships in a system that's seizing up. An elegiac tone pervades the story - a longing for lost loves, failed or forgotten aspirations (Conde, for example, dreams of being a writer), as Havana prepares for the imminent Hurricane Felix. For the non-Cuban reader, Paisaje de otoño (translated into English as Havana Black, Bitter Lemon Press 2006, trans. Peter Bush) gives an insight into the intricacies and intimacies of Cuban life in the difficult period after the collapse of the Soviet Union.