Leonardo Padura elected member of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua

January 19, 2021

The Mexican Academy of Language (AML) elected Cuban writer Leonardo Padura as a member, who will maintain his correspondent position from Havana, Cuba; as stated in an official statement from the institution.

Regarding Leonardo Padura, the AML highlights his importance in Hispanic American letters; a major author of detective novels that have elevated the genre to high art, such as the tetralogy Perfect Past, Lenten Winds, Masks and Autumn Landscape, and works that demand exhaustive investigation, such as The Man Who Loved Dogs, in which he accounts for León Trotsky's stay and death in Mexico. Chronicler, journalist, lover of baseball and music, Padura's trajectory has been crowned, so far and among other awards, with the Princess of Asturias Prize.

Leonardo Padura was born in Havana in 1955. He is a writer, journalist and screenwriter. He studied Latin American Literature at the University of Havana. Since the publication of his novel Fever of Horses (1988) he has developed a notable narrative trajectory (literary, journalistic and cinematographic).

Among his notable works are Perfect Past (1991), Lenten Winds (1994), Masks (1997), Autumn Landscape (1998), The Man Who Loved Dogs, Heretics (2013), The Transparency of Time (2018) and Like Dust in the Wind (2020).

Throughout his career he has received numerous awards, such as the Hammett, the Café Gijón, the Raymond Chandler, the Roger Caillois and the Initiales; the French government awarded him in 2013 the Order of Arts and Letters and he was recognized with the Princess of Asturias Prize for Letters in 2015.

The other elected member of the AML was Nicaraguan narrator and journalist Sergio Ramírez who will maintain his correspondent position from Managua, Nicaragua.

Leonardo Padura, like Sergio Ramírez, were proposed by the full academicians Jaime Labastida, Vicente Quirarte and Jorge Ruiz Dueñas.