Heretics

In 1939, the Saint Louis sails from Hamburg into Havana's port with hundreds of Jewish refugees seeking asylum. The Kaminskys have a treasure that they hope will save them: a Rembrandt portrait of Christ. Yet six days later the vessel is forced to leave the harbour with the family, bound for the horrors of Europe. Nearly seven decades later, the Rembrandt reappears in an auction house in London, prompting Daniel's son to travel to Cuba to track down the story of the lost masterpiece. In Heretics, Leonardo Padura takes us from the tenements of Cuba to Rembrandt's gloomy studio in 17th-century Amsterdam, telling the story of people forced to choose between the tenets of their faith and the realities of the world.