Heretics

In 1939, the Saint Louis sails from Hamburg into Havana’s port with hundreds of Jewish refugees. From the docks, nine-year-old Daniel Kaminsky watches as the passengers, including his parents, become embroiled in a fiasco of Cuban corruption. But the Kaminskys have a treasure that they hope will save them: a Rembrandt portrait of Christ. Yet six days later the vessel is forced to leave the harbour with the family, bound for the horrors of Europe. The Kaminskys, along with their priceless heirloom, disappear.

Seven decades later, the Rembrandt reappears in a London auction house, prompting Daniel’s son to travel to Cuba to track down the story of the lost masterpiece. He hires Mario Conde, and together they navigate a web of deception and violence in the morally complex city of Havana. In Heretics , Leonardo Padura takes us from the tenements and beaches of Cuba to Rembrandt’s gloomy studio in seventeenth-century Amsterdam. A grand detective story and a moving historical drama, Padura’s novel is as compelling, mysterious, and enduring as the painting at its centre.

About the Author

Leonardo Padura was born in Havana in 1955 and lives there with his wife Lucia. A novelist, journalist, and critic, he is the author of several novels, one collection of essays, and a volume of short stories. His Havana series crime novels featuring the detective Mario Conde, published in English by Bitter Lemon Press, have been translated into many languages and have won literary prizes around the world.

To quote Padura: "I bury myself in Cuba deeply so that I can express what Cuba is, and I have not left Cuba because I am a Cuban writer and I can't be anything else."