The Red Violinist

Reyes Monforte is back with her most ambitious novel: the exciting story of the Spanish woman who became the most important Soviet spy of the 20th century.

The legendary story of a courageous woman who fought for her ideals beyond family, love, friendship, and the world order.

"But who the hell is that woman?" was the most frequently heard question in CIA offices. Who was pulling the strings of global espionage, thwarting intelligence operations, twisting wills, changing identities, leading impossible missions, uncovering state secrets, and drawing the threat of a Third World War on the Cold War board? That mysterious woman was the Spanish África de las Heras, who became the most important Soviet spy of the 20th century.

Recruited by Stalin's secret services in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, she was part of the operation to assassinate Trotsky in Mexico, fought against the Nazis as a #violinist# radio operator in Ukraine, starred in the KGB's most fruitful honey trap by marrying the anti-communist writer Felisberto Hernández and creating the largest network of Soviet agents in South America, left her mark on nuclear espionage, in the Bay of Pigs and was associated with Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera or Ernest Hemingway, among others. A life full of danger, mystery, glamour and numerous secret identities under one alias: Patria. Not even her personal relationship with Trotsky's assassin, Ramón Mercader, separated her from her objectives, but what price did she have to pay for her loyalty to the USSR and to herself?

In The Red Violinist, Reyes Monforte narrates the incredible life of a fascinating icon of our history; an epic, torrential, and ambitious novel about one of the women who forged the 20th century as we know it.