The Man Who Loved Dogs

The Man Who Loved Dogs

Rating

8.0

The Pequod Review:

The Man Who Loved Dogs is a fictionalized account of the murder of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940, as told from the alternate perspectives of: (i) Trotsky himself, (ii) the assassin Ramon Mercader, and finally (iii) the book's narrator Ivan Maturell, who has been told a detailed story of the assassination from a dog-loving Cuban stranger. Padura's narrative is slow-going, but he is a very good stylist and his story considers not just the Cuban Revolution but the unmet promises of communism more generally.