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Adios Hemingway

Name: Adios Hemingway
Author: Leonardo Padura Fuentes
ISBN: 9781841957951

by Leonardo Padura Fuentes, John King

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Overview

"When the skeletal remains of a man brought down by shotgun surface on the Havana estate of Ernest Hemingway, writer, drinker, and ex-cop Mario Conte reluctantly accepts a reinstatement to investigate the forty-year-old crime. As the truth of the night of October 3, 1958, slowly reveals itself, Conte must come to terms with his idealistic memory of Papa Hemingway on Cuba's sun-drenched docks, back when Conde was a child tagging along with his grandfather." Padura Fuentes weaves Conte's world with that of Hemingway's Cuba four decades earlier, a period marking the beginning of Hemingway's decline. In the heat-and-rum haze, the eras and personas begin to merge.

Synopsis

Padura Fuentes — one of Cuba's best-known and most widely acclaimed writers — has written a first-rate detective story set against the backdrop of Hemingway's Cuba. Part fascinating examination of Hemingway the man in his trying final years and part nifty postmodern procedural, Adios Hemingway will engross Hemingway fans while keeping them in suspense until the final pages.

The New York Times - James Parker

Flashing back and forth between 1958 and the present, Adiós Hemingway is an elegantly turned meditation on the cold realities of age, the waning of strength and beauty and the production of literary myth. There is also lest the theme should grow too weighty some dexterous symbolic work with a pair of Ava Gardner's knickers. Thanks in part to John King's limpid, breezy translation, Adiós Hemingway reads cleanly and feels simple, but in his dreamy and dogged pursuit of Hemingway this ''old, rather dirtybearded man with his large hands and feet'' the former Inspector Conde is as psycholiterary a gumshoe as any Paul Auster fan could wish for.

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Editorials

James Parker

Flashing back and forth between 1958 and the present, Adiós Hemingway is an elegantly turned meditation on the cold realities of age, the waning of strength and beauty and the production of literary myth. There is also — lest the theme should grow too weighty — some dexterous symbolic work with a pair of Ava Gardner's knickers. Thanks in part to John King's limpid, breezy translation, Adiós Hemingway reads cleanly and feels simple, but in his dreamy and dogged pursuit of Hemingway — this ''old, rather dirtybearded man with his large hands and feet'' — the former Inspector Conde is as psycholiterary a gumshoe as any Paul Auster fan could wish for.
— The New York Times

Library Journal

In his latest detective novel, prize-winning Cuban writer Fuentes resurrects Mario Conde, the hard-drinking hero of his "Four Seasons" trilogy, who has given up police work to try his hand at writing. When asked by his former partner to help solve the mystery of a dead FBI agent found in Hemingway's Cuban home, Finca Vigia, Conde cannot resist the opportunity to investigate the murder and cross swords with the literary lion who helped him define what it meant to be a writer. As he interviews those still living who knew Papa or worked for him and follows various clues, including a pair of Ava Gardner's knickers, Conde ruminates on Hemingway's legend, his failing health, and his relationship with Cuba. In an author's note, Fuentes admits that he uses Conde to work out his own love-hate relationship with Hemingway. In doing so, he provides a detailed and credible portrait of Hemingway's last days in Cuba in this entertaining literary whodunit. Perfect for readers of detective fiction who happen to be Hemingway aficionados, this title is recommended for public libraries with large popular fiction collections.-William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.