The Man Who Loved Dogs

⚖The case for it

Three strands across three continents: Trotsky moving between exiles, the man being trained to reach him, and a blocked writer in Havana who meets an old stranger walking two borzois on the beach. The recruitment thread is the propulsive one, a wounded Republican soldier rebuilt into somebody with an invented past. Padura makes the exile years land as shrinking circles and constant watching rather than as biography, with Kahlo and Rivera in the margins. Kushner’s translation holds both registers. Readers call it “the best Russian novel by a non-Russian author.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

The Trotsky chapters are thick with Comintern names and dates, and critics say plainly that “Padura’s Trotsky sections are a slog,” “overstuffed with names and events.” Without the Revolution and the Spanish Civil War already in your head, long stretches read as compressed history. At close to six hundred pages, “it took me two months to finish this big book,” with readers admitting they “had to drag myself through some parts.” The Cuban frame is the thinnest of the three. And even admirers find that “the three separate stories remain too separate.”

— the honest librarian

12h

honest hours

17

sittings