The Transparency of Time by Leonardo Padura
Although Mario Conde is an ex-policeman in Cuba, Padura novels are never mere detective stories. Firstly, they capture Cuba as I briefly experienced it and when I read them, I’m transported back to a place I fully recognise.
Over the course of his books, we see the changing face of Cuba as the USSR collapses and, with it, economic support for Cuba. In this book, set in 2014, we see the new two-tier economy where a doctor hardly earns enough to live but where a wealthy wheeler-dealer class is emerging.
Then, they’re about friendship. Every book has many scenes of Conde drinking and dining with his close (male) friends. I feel I know them, not least because my wife and I spent an evening with an elderly Cuban and they remind me of him. That said, his treatment of women is disappointingly chauvinist. Though many of his women are strong, he sees little more than their beauty.
The books are also melancholy. In a certain sense, Conde regrets sticking with Cuba through thick and thin and feels it is reflective of some shortcoming in his character. Nevertheless, they’re also about honour because Conde plays it hard-nosed, but always does the “right” thing.
Finally, they are deeply cultured works. Padura frequently explores the past, using fictionalised versions of history on which to build his plots. He sends me scurrying to wikipedia to understand just how much is true and how much invented.
Although The Man Who Loved Dogs remains for me his magnum opus, The Transparency of Time is right up there among the best. This time we visit episodes in the history of the Knights Templar, the pirate Roger de Flor and statues of a Black Virgin. On finishing the book I feel that sense of loss that I only feel after the best books.
Asynchronists 