Leonardo Padura was born in Havana in 1955 and lives there today. A novelist, journalist, and critic, he is the author of several novels, one collection of essays, and a volume of short stories. Leonardo Padura is the most internationally successful Cuban novelist of the revolutionary era and responsible for renovating the Cuban detective narrative in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union.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. In January 2014 his historical novel about Trotsky's assassin, The Man Who Loved Dogs, will be published in English.