Cuban writer Ivan Cardena Maturell meets a mysterious foreigner on a Havana beach who is always in the company of two Russian wolfhounds. Ivan quickly names him ''the man who loved dogs''. The man confesses that he is Ramon Mercader, the man who killed Leon Trotsky in Mexico City, and that he is now in secret exile in Cuba. This is Leonardo Padura''s most brilliantly executed novel yet. It is the story of revolutions fought and betrayed, the ways in which political convictions are continually tested, and a critique of the role of fear in consolidating power.