Leonardo Padura Fuentes
Leonardo Padura Fuentes
Born	1955 (1955) Cuba, Havana
Nationality	Cuban
Movement	Novel, journalism
Works	Fiebre de caballos, Adios, Hemingway

Leonardo Padura Fuentes (born 1955) is a Cuban novelist and journalist. As of 2007^[update], he is one of Cuba's best known writers internationally. In English and some other languages, he is often referred to by the shorter form of his name, Leonardo Padura. He has written movie scripts, two books of short stories and a series of detective novels translated into 10 languages.

Life and career[link]

Padura, who was born in Havana, took a degree in Latin American literature at the University of Havana. In 1980 he first came to prominence as an investigative journalist in a literary magazine called Caimán Barbudo, a well-established publication that is still in print today. He subsequently 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, Fiebre de caballos (Horse Fever), which was basically a love story. He then spent the next six years continuing 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 Mario Conde, and while he was writing it, he realised how fundamental his years as a journalist were to his development as a writer. Firstly it gave him a whole new experience of the country, and secondly, it consequently changed his style with respect to his first book.

Padura is best known in the English-speaking world for his quartet of detective novels featuring lieutenant Mario Conde, Las cuatro estaciones (The four seasons). These have recently started to be published in English translation. Mario Conde is a cop who would rather be a writer, and admits to feelings of "solidarity with writers, crazy people, and drunkards". The novels are:

• Pasado perfecto ("Havana Blue", 2007), 1991
• Vientos de cuaresma ("Havana Gold", 2008), 1994
• Mascaras ("Havana Red", 2005), 1997
• Paisaje de otoño ("Havana Black", 2006), 1998.

These books are set respectively in winter, spring, summer and autumn (Vientos de cuaresma literally means "Lenten Winds" and Paisaje de otoño, Autumn landscape). Paisaje de otoño won the 1998 Premio Hammett of the Asociación Internacional de Escritores Policiacos (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 U.S. and Canadian authors. Padura has published two subsequent books featuring Conde, the novella Adiós Hemingway (Padura’s first book to be translated into English, in 2005), and a recent novel La neblina del ayer (The Fog of Yesterday). The Havana-Cultura website comments on the similarities and differences between Padura and Hemingway and how they might explain his decision to feature the expatriate American in Adiós Hemingway.

Padura's books are also available in French (including all the books featuring Conde), Italian, Portuguese, German and Danish.

Padura's novel El hombre que amaba a los perros (The Man Who Loved Dogs) deals with the murder of Leon Trotsky and the man who assassinated him, Ramon Mercader. At almost 600 pages, it is his most accomplished work and the result of more than five years of meticulous historical research. The novel, published in September 2009, attracted a lot of publicity mainly because of its political theme. The main argument of the author seems to be that Stalin betrayed socialism and destroyed the hope of creating a utopian society in the 20th century.^{[citation needed]} It leaves open the possibility that such a society might still be possible in the 21st.

Bibliography[link]

• Fiebre de caballos
• Pasado perfecto ("Havana Blue", 2007), 1991
• Vientos de cuaresma ("Havana Gold", 2008), 1994
• Máscaras ("Havana Red", 2005), 1997
• Paisaje de otoño ("Havana Black", 2006), 1998.
• La novela de mi vida, 2002
• Adiós Hemingway, 2005
• La neblina del ayer ("Havana Fever", 2009), 2005
• El hombre que amaba a los perros, 2009

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Leonardo Padura Fuentes

• Interview with Padura in Shots ezine
• Interview with Leonardo Padura on Havana-Cultura
• "Perspectivismo y ficción en La novela de mi vida: la historia como versión de sí misma" Artículo de Sonia Behar en Memoria histórica, Género e Interdisciplinariedad: Los Estudios Culturales Hispánicos en el siglo XXI. Eds. Santiago Juan-Navarro y Joan Torres-Pou. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2007.

References[link]

• Uxo, Carlos, ed. (2006). The Detective Fiction of Leonardo Padura Fuentes. Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University Press. ISBN 1-870355-11-3. Articles in English and Spanish.
• Wilkinson, Stephen (2006). Detective Fiction in Cuban Society and Culture. Oxford & Berne: Peter Lang. ISBN 3-03910-698-8 (US 0-8204-7963-2). This book contains four chapters on Padura and a history of the Cuban detective genre.
• González, Eduardo, (2006). Cuba and the Tempest: Literature and Cinema in the Time of Diaspora. The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-3015-4. The long last section of this book is dedicated to Padura's four novels: Las cuatro estaciones, under the title: "1989: The Year that Never Was"

Elia Suleiman (Arabic: إيليا سليمان‎, born July 28, 1960 in Nazareth, Palestine), is a Palestinian film director and actor.^[1] He is best known for the 2002 film Divine Intervention (Arabic: يد إلهية‎‎), a modern tragic comedy on living under occupation in Palestine which won the Jury Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. Elia Suleiman's cinematic style is often compared to that of Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton, for its poetic interplay between "burlesque and sobriety".^[2]

Early work[link]

Between 1982–1993, Suleiman lived in New York City, where he co-directed: Introduction to the End of an Argument (1990) and directed Homage by Assassination, that both won numerous awards.

An experimental video film, co-directed by Jayce Salloum, Introduction to the End of an Argument critiqued the portrayal of Arabs in Western media and its effect on foreign policy by juxtaposing clips from Hollywood films, television broadcasts and cartoons with live scenes (shot by Salloum) from the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.^[3]

Homage by Assassination is a "diary film" that critiques the 1991 Gulf War via the juxtaposition of multilayered personal anecdotes and identity. The film offers a lucid portrait of what Ella Shohat and Robert Stam have termed "cultural disembodiment," manifested in "multiple failures of communication," that reflect the contradictions of a "diasporic subject."^[4]

Pedagogical work[link]

In 1994, Suleiman moved to Jerusalem and began teaching at Birzeit University in the West Bank. He was entrusted with the task of developing a Film and Media Department at the university with funding support from the European Commission.^[2] In 2008 Elia Suleiman became a professor at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee.^[1] He continues to guest lecture in other universities around the world.

Feature films[link]

In 1996, Suleiman directed Chronicle of a Disappearance, his first feature film. It won the Best First Film Prize at the 1996 Venice Film Festival.^[2]

In 2002, Suleiman's second feature film, Divine Intervention, subtitled, A Chronicle of Love and Pain, won the Jury Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival^[5] and the International Critics Prize (FIPRESCI), also receiving the Best Foreign Film Prize at the European Awards in Rome.^[6]

His latest film is called The Time That Remains, which competed in the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Suleiman won the Black Pearl prize for best Middle Eastern narrative film at the Middle Eastern Film Festival in Abu Dhabi on October 17, 2009.^[7] The film won the Critics' Prize from the Argentinean Film Critics Association at Mar del Plata International Film Festival.

Other film work[link]

In his 1998 film, The Arab Dream ("Al Hilm Al-Arabi") Suleiman autobiographically explores issues of identity, expressing that: "I don't have a homeland to say I live in exile... I live in postmortem... daily life, daily death."^[8] Suleiman also produced a short film in 1997, entitled War and Peace in Vesoul.^[3]

In 2000, Suleiman released the 15-minute short film "Cyber Palestine" which follows a modern-day Mary and Joseph as they attempt to cross from Gaza into Bethlehem.^[9]

Suleiman was part of the nine person jury for the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.^[10]

See also[link]

• Palestinian Christians

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Provan, Alexander (February 2007). "Requesting Permission to Narrate: Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema". Stop Smiling Magazine. 
• Gertz, Nurith; Khleifi, George (2008): Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma, and Memory, Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-22007-6. Chapter 7: Between exile and Homeland: The Films of Elia Suleiman (p. 171 -189)

External links[link]

• Elia Suleiman @ European Graduate School. Biography, bibliography, photos and videos.
• Elia Suleiman at the Internet Movie Database