Rum-Soaked, Bloody, Sprawling 'Heretics' Is A Romp Through Centuries
Leonardo Padura returns to one of his favorite characters — broken-down Cuban gumshoe Mario Conde — and puts him on the trail of a missing Rembrandt in his gorgeously written new novel Heretics.
I love reading books in translation. There's just something about that second pass — that second look at the language — which removes, by my rough estimate, something like 10% of any writer's preciousness (I've never known one who couldn't spare that much, at least) and gives every line such a chewy, lived-in feel. The motion of the words themselves, from one tongue to another — from one brain to another, one mouth to another — alters them fundamentally. The untranslatable idiom, the occasional clumsy bit of dialog (no doubt perfect in in its awkwardness. I cherish it all.
