Leonardo de la Caridad Padura Fuentes (born October 10, 1955) is a Cuban novelist and journalist. As of 2007 , he is one of Cuba's best-known writers internationally. In his native Spanish, as well as in English and some other languages, he is often referred to by the shorter form of his name, Leonardo Padura . He has written screenplays, two books of short stories, and a series of detective novels translated into 10 languages. In 2012, Padura was awarded the National Prize for Literature , Cuba's national literary award and the most important award of its kind. In 2015, he was awarded the Premio Principe de Asturias de las Letras of Spain, one of the most important literary prizes in the Spanish-speaking world and usually considered as the Iberoamerican Nobel Prize.
32-401: Padura is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: Leonardo Padura Fuentes (born 1955), Cuban novelist and journalist Tymko Padura (1801–1871), Ukrainian-Polish poet, musician, and composer-songwriter [REDACTED] Surname list This page lists people with the surname Padura . If an internal link intending to refer to
64-483: A novel , yet more complicated ones than a short story . The conflicts also have more time to develop than in short stories. Novellas may or may not be divided into chapters (good examples of those with chapters are Animal Farm by George Orwell and The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells ), and white space is often used to divide the sections, something less common in short stories. Novellas may be intended to be read at
96-444: A book's length, saying that "any distinctions that begin with an objective and external quality like size are bound to be misleading." Stephen King , in his introduction to Different Seasons , a 1982 collection of four novellas, notes the difficulties of selling a novella in the commercial publishing world, since it does not fit the typical length requirements of either magazine or book publishers. Despite these problems, however,
128-631: A group with English subtitles as the Netflix mini-series Four Seasons in Havana . They star Cuban actor Jorge Perugorría and were produced by Tornasol Film. An English-language remake named Havana Quartet was considered by Starz , with Antonio Banderas tagged to act as Conde, but it did not proceed beyond the development stage. In 2014, BBC Radio broadcast dramatizations of the four stories starring Zubin Varla . Padura's historical novel El hombre que amaba
160-644: A los perros ( The Man Who Loved Dogs ) deals with the 1940 death of wanted fugitive and Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky , and the NKVD agent responsible for eliminating him, Ramon Mercader . At almost 600 pages, it is perhaps Padura's most ambitious and accomplished work and the result of more than five years of meticulous historical research. The novel, published in September 2009, attracted publicity mainly because of its political theme. It centres "on Stalin’s murderous obsession with Leon Trotsky, an intellectual architect of
192-749: A novella embodies." Sometimes, as with other genres, the genre name is mentioned in the title of a single work (compare the Divine Comedy or Goethe 's Das Märchen ). Austrian writer Stefan Zweig 's Die Schachnovelle (1942) (literally, "The Chess Novella", but translated in 1944 as The Royal Game ) is an example of a title naming its genre. This might be suggestive of the genre's historicization. Commonly, longer novellas are referred to as novels; Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899) are sometimes called novels, as are many science fiction works such as H. G. Wells' The War of
224-429: A novella is a fictional narrative of indeterminate length—a few pages to hundreds—restricted to a single, suspenseful event, situation, or conflict leading to an unexpected turning point ( Wendepunkt ), provoking a logical but surprising end. Novellen tend to contain a concrete symbol, which is the narrative's focal point. The novella influenced the development of the short story and the novel throughout Europe. In
256-480: A range between 17,500 and 40,000 words is commonly used for the novella category, whereas 7,500–17,500 is commonly used for novelettes. According to The Writer , a novelette is approximately between 7,000 and 20,000 words in length, anything shorter being considered a short story. This list contains those novellas that are widely considered to be the best examples of the genre, through their appearance on multiple best-of lists. Some literary awards include
288-403: A set of exquisite little tales, novels in the original meaning of the word)". But when the term novella was used it was already clear that a rather short and witty form was intended: "The brief Novella has ever been a prodigious favorite with the nation…since the days of Boccaccio." In 1902, William Dean Howells wrote: "Few modern fictions of the novel's dimensions…have the beauty of form many
320-419: A single sitting, like short stories, and thus produce a unitary effect on the reader. According to Warren Cariou , "The novella is generally not as formally experimental as the long story and the novel can be, and it usually lacks the subplots, the multiple points of view, and the generic adaptability that are common in the novel. It is most often concerned with personal and emotional development rather than with
352-470: A specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name (s) to the link. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Padura&oldid=1158044362 " Category : Surnames Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description is different from Wikidata All set index articles Monitored short pages Leonardo Padura Fuentes Padura, who
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#1732885172794384-645: A story to be considered a novella, a short story or a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association defines a novella's word count to be between 17,500 and 40,000 words; at 250 words per page, this equates to 70 to 160 pages. See below for definitions used by other organisations. The novella as a literary genre began developing in the Italian literature of the early Renaissance , principally by Giovanni Boccaccio , author of The Decameron (1353). The Decameron featured 100 tales (named novellas) told by ten people (seven women and three men) fleeing
416-414: Is short enough and straightforward enough to qualify as a novella. However, historically, it has been regarded as a novel. Dictionaries define novelette similarly to novella , sometimes identically, sometimes with a disparaging sense of being trivial or sentimental. Some literary awards have a longer "novella" and a shorter "novelette" category, with a distinction based on word count . Among awards,
448-512: Is very much his niche: he is widely seen as the best writer in Cuba, a country whose best writers were all formed before Castro rule. He offers us an off-the-beaten-path visit of a relatively closed society, a prose that is free of propaganda (though not liberated from surveillance). By occupying a small but significant critical space in Cuba, Padura becomes more interesting for Cuba observers and more intriguing for students of cultural and literary trends in
480-582: The Black Death , by escaping from Florence to the Fiesole hills in 1348. This structure was then imitated by subsequent authors, notably the French queen Marguerite de Navarre , whose Heptaméron (1559) included 72 original French tales and was modeled after the structure of The Decameron . The Italian genre novella grew out of a rich tradition of medieval short narrative forms. It took its first major form in
512-653: The novella Adiós Hemingway , La neblina del ayer ( The Fog of Yesterday , published in English as Havana Fever )., La Cola de la Serpiente ( Grab a Snake by the Tail ), Herejes ( Heretics ) and La Transparencia del Tiempo ( The Transparency of Time ). Adiós Hemingway was Padura's first book to be translated into English, in 2005. The Havana-Cultura website comments on the similarities and differences between Padura and Hemingway, and how they might explain Padura's decision to feature
544-406: The Italian novella meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts. The Italian term is a feminine of novello , which means new , similarly to the English word news . Merriam-Webster defines a novella as "a work of fiction intermediate in length and complexity between a short story and a novel ". There is disagreement regarding the number of pages or words necessary for
576-594: The Russian Revolution and the founder of the Red Army ", and considers "how revolutionary utopias devolve into totalitarian dystopias." Padura's books are also available in French (including all the books featuring Conde), Italian, Portuguese , German, Greek , and Danish . Novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels , but longer than most novelettes and short stories . The English word novella derives from
608-409: The Worlds (1897) and Philip Francis Nowlan's Armageddon 2419 A.D. (1928). Less often, longer works are referred to as novellas. The subjectivity of the parameters of the novella genre is indicative of its shifting and diverse nature as an art form. In her 2010 Open Letters Monthly series, "A Year With Short Novels", Ingrid Norton criticizes the tendency to make clear demarcations based purely on
640-570: The anonymous late 13th century Libro di novelle et di bel parlar gentile , known as Il Novellino , and reached its culmination with The Decameron . Followers of Boccaccio such as Giovanni Fiorentino , Franco Sacchetti , Giovanni Sercambi and Simone de' Prodenzani continued the tradition into the early 15th century. The Italian novella influenced many later writers, including Shakespeare . Novellas were also written in Spain. Miguel de Cervantes ' book Novelas ejemplares (1613) added innovation to
672-418: The concentrated focus of the short story and the broad scope of the novel. In his essay, "Briefly, the case for the novella", Canadian author George Fetherling (who wrote the novella Tales of Two Cities ) said that to reduce the novella to nothing more than a short novel is like "insisting that a pony is a baby horse". The sometimes blurry definition between a novel and a novella can create controversy, as
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#1732885172794704-478: The country, and secondly, it changed his style with respect to his first book. In 2013, France named him a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres . Padura still lives and writes in his native city of Havana. "In one of his essays entitled 'I would like to be Paul Auster ,' Padura complains that he would love not to be constantly asked about politics in his country and why he continues living there. But this
736-718: The expatriate American in Adiós Hemingway . Paisaje de otoño won the 1998 Premio Hammett [ es ] of the Asociación Internacional de Escritores Policíacos [ es ] (International Association of Crime Writers). This prize should not be confused with the similarly named Hammett Prize given by the North American branch of the organization, which is restricted to United States and Canadian authors. The four books were adapted as four Spanish-language television films, which have been released in
768-498: The genre with more attention to the depiction of human character and social background. Not until the late 18th and early 19th centuries did writers fashion the novella into a literary genre structured by precepts and rules, generally in a realistic mode . At that time, the Germans were the most active writers of the novelle (German: "Novelle"; plural: "Novellen"). For the German writer,
800-696: The island." Padura is best known in the English-speaking world for his quartet of detective novels featuring lieutenant Mario Conde. Collectively titled Las cuatro estaciones ( The four seasons ), they are sometimes called The Havana Quartet in their English translations. Conde is a cop who would rather be a writer, and admits to feelings of "solidarity with writers, crazy people, and drunkards". These books are set respectively in winter, spring, summer and autumn ( Vientos de cuaresma literally means "Lenten Winds" and Paisaje de otoño , "Autumn landscape"): Padura has published five subsequent books featuring Conde,
832-406: The larger social sphere. The novella generally retains something of the unity of impression that is a hallmark of the short story, but it also contains more highly developed characterization and more luxuriant description. The term novel , borrowed from the Italian novella , originally meant "any of a number of tales or stories making up a larger work; a short narrative of this type, a fable", and
864-400: The late 19th century Henry James was one of the first English language critics to use the term novella for a story that was longer and more complex than a short story, but shorter than a novel. In English speaking countries the modern novella is rarely defined as a distinct literary genre, but is often used as a term for a short novel. A novella generally features fewer conflicts than
896-487: The novella's length provides unique advantages; in the introduction to a novella anthology titled Sailing to Byzantium , Robert Silverberg writes: [The novella] is one of the richest and most rewarding of literary forms...it allows for more extended development of theme and character than does the short story, without making the elaborate structural demands of the full-length book. Thus it provides an intense, detailed exploration of its subject, providing to some degree both
928-416: Was basically a love story. During the next six years, he continued to work as a journalist, reporting on a wide range of cultural and historical topics. However, around this time he began to write his first novel featuring police officer Mario Conde. While he was writing it, Padura realised how fundamental his years as a journalist were to his development as a writer. First, it gave him a whole new experience of
960-648: Was born in Havana , Cuba, took a degree in Latin American literature at the University of Havana . He first came to prominence in 1980 as an investigative journalist for a literary magazine called Caimán Barbudo , a well-established publication that is still published today. He became known as an essayist and a writer of screenplays and in particular, detective novels . He wrote his first short novel between 1983 and 1984. Titled Fiebre de caballos ("Horse Fever"), it
992-523: Was the case with British writer Ian McEwan 's On Chesil Beach (2007). The author described it as a novella, but the panel for the Man Booker Prize in 2007 qualified the book as a "short novel". Thus, this "novella" was shortlisted for an award for best original novel. A similar case is found with a much older work of fiction: The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack London . This book, by modern standards,
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1024-469: Was then many times used in the plural, reflecting the usage as in The Decameron and its followers. Usage of the more italianate novella in English seems to be a bit younger. The differentiation of the two terms seems to have occurred only in the 19th century, following the new fashion of the novella in German literature. In 1834, John Lothrop Motley could still speak of "Tieck's novels (which last are
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