Widely regarded as one of the best works by the winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize for Literature, San Camilo, 1936 appears here for the first time in English translation. One of Spain’s most popular writers, Camilo JosÉ Cela is recognized for his experiments with language and with difficult subject matter. In San Camilo, 1936, first published in 1969, these concerns converge in a fascinating narrative that is as challenging as it is rewarding, as troubling as it is compelling.A story of history as it happens, by turns confusing and startingly clear, echoing with news and rumors, defined by grand gestures and intimate pauses, the novel leads the reader into the ordinary life of extraordinary times. Beginning on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, San Camilo, 1936 follows a twenty-year-old student’s attempts to sort out his private affairs (sex, money, career) in the midst of the turmoil overtaking his country. In vivid and richly textured prose that distinguishes Cela’s work, the emotional reality of civil war takes on a vibrant immediacy that is humorous, tender, and ultimately transforming as a young man tries to come to terms with the historical moment he inhabits-and hopes to survive. Readers new to Cela will find in this novel ample reason for the author’s growing reputation among audiences worldwide.

Confined to a prison cell, thrice-murderer Pascual Duarte recounts his journey from a violent childhood to a life of pain and misfortune; juxtaposing tableaus of country poverty against scenes of bare brutality, Nobel laureate Camilo José Cela crafts a powerful meditation on cruelty and anomie. The Family of Pascual Duarte follows his upbringing in the poor Spanish province of Extremadura to his eventual imprisonment—and impending death sentence. Death permeates Duarte’s world: his father’s grotesque death to rabies, his young brother’s drowning in an oil vat, and the loss of his children. But it is his wife’s sudden death that condemns him to the darkest path when, losing all faith and driven by blind revenge, he kills her souteneur. Now an alien to the world around him, Pascual Duarte resigns himself to his bloodied fate—yet never gives up his search for peace.Camilo José Cela has been recognized as one of the pioneers of Spanish literary realism, and his masterwork The Family of Pascual Duarte proves the power of his prose. The novel, which birthed the transgressive and groundbreaking tremendismo movement, roils with emotion and unflinching inhumanity, painting the Spanish countryside in bloodshed, eroticism, and an unshakeable feeling of grief. Blending the political with the personal with the philosophic, the result is an unparalleled exploration of the fraught relationship between man and society, and the past’s inescapable hold on the present.

Confined to a prison cell, thrice-murderer Pascual Duarte recounts his journey from a violent childhood to a life of pain and misfortune; juxtaposing tableaus of country poverty against scenes of bare brutality, Nobel laureate Camilo José Cela crafts a powerful meditation on cruelty and anomie. 

The Family of Pascual Duarte follows his upbringing in the poor Spanish province of Extremadura to his eventual imprisonment—and impending death sentence. Death permeates Duarte’s world: his father’s grotesque death to rabies, his young brother’s drowning in an oil vat, and the loss of his children. But it is his wife’s sudden death that condemns him to the darkest path when, losing all faith and driven by blind revenge, he kills her souteneur. Now an alien to the world around him, Pascual Duarte resigns himself to his bloodied fate—yet never gives up his search for peace.

Camilo José Cela has been recognized as one of the pioneers of Spanish literary realism, and his masterwork The Family of Pascual Duarte proves the power of his prose. The novel, which birthed the transgressive and groundbreaking tremendismo movement, roils with emotion and unflinching inhumanity, painting the Spanish countryside in bloodshed, eroticism, and an unshakeable feeling of grief. Blending the political with the personal with the philosophic, the result is an unparalleled exploration of the fraught relationship between man and society, and the past’s inescapable hold on the present.

Complete and uncensored in English for the very first time, a fragmented, daringly irreverent depiction of decadence and decay in Franco's Spain written by the 1989 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.The translator Anthony Kerrigan compared Camilo José Cela, the 1989 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, to Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Curzio Malaparte—all “ferocious writers, truculent, badly spoken, even foulmouthed.” However provocative and disturbing, Cela’s novels are also flat-out dazzling, their sentences as rigorous as they are riotous, lodging like knives in the reader’s mind. Cela called himself a proponent of “uglyism,” of “nothingism.” But he has the knack, to quote another critic, Américo Castro, of deploying those “nothings and lacks” to construct beauty.The Hive is set over the course of a few days in the Madrid of 1943, not long after the end of the Spanish Civil War, when the regime of General Francisco Franco was at its most oppressive. The book includes more than three hundred characters whose comings and goings it tracks to hypnotic effect. Scabrous, scandalous, and profane, The Hive is a virtuosic group portrait of a wounded and sick society.

In diesem Roman entfaltet Literaturnobelpreisträger Camilo José Cela das Panoptikum des Allzumenschlichen - die Liebe, die Eifersucht, der Ehebruch vor dem Hintergrund des Franco Regimes.Der Bienenkorb - das ist Madrid im Zweiten Weltkrieg, das ist das Cafe der Dona Rosa. Spiegel eines durch den Bürgerkrieg entwurzelten Kleinbürgertums und Drehpunkt vieler Lebensgeschichten. Von hier führen die Fäden in die Hinterhöfe, Parkanlagen und Absteigen Madrids, zu den Szenen von Liebe, Ehebruch und Eifersucht. So wird dieser beste Roman des Nobelpreisträgers zu einem eindrucksvollen Panoptikum aus dem Alltag einer faschistischen Gesellschaft.Der nach diesem Roman gedrehte Film von Mario Camus gewann 1983 den »Goldenen Bären« bei der Berlinale.

Lolita Franco (1912-1977) y Camilo José Cela (1916-2002) mantuvieron entre 1934 y 1943 una intensa correspondencia que nos acerca a la personalidad de la intelectual olvidada y esposa de Julián Marías, y a la fragua de un escritor que, en su juventud, luchaba por ser poeta. Cartas cruzadas en años turbulentos que ofrecen, al margen de lo literario, el pulso de «una mujer excepcional, inteligente, culta y sensible, con la cabeza clara y el sentimiento noble y sereno». Lolita Franco, alumna destacada de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Madrid (Ortega trató de convencerla para que fuese la primera mujer licenciada), guía los pasos literarios y vitales de Camilo mientras en el joven poeta crece el enamoramiento.De lo mundano y lo sublime nos tiende un epistolario único que desvela no solo la personalidad y figura de Dolores Franco, intelectual, profesora y traductora, sino a un Cela desconocido e inseguro que da sus primeros pasos.

La forja de un escritor recopila cincuenta artículos, escritos entre 1943 y 1952, ordenados en tres apartados temáticos que abarcan las experiencias vitales del joven artista, las reflexiones sobre la escritura, y las consideraciones sobre la pintura, el cine, la música o la fotografía. Proceden de periódicos y revistas como Arriba, La Vanguardia Española, Ínsula, La Tarde o Correo Literario.Los textos seleccionados ayudan a entender la obra creativa de Cela, así como otros aspectos de su personalidad.

Pascual Duarte sitter i fängelse i väntan på avrättning. För att fördriva tiden skriver han ner sin livshistoria som botgöring, förklaring och varning till andra att inte följa i samma fotspår. Det är en bister historia där Duartes erfarenhet av fattigdom, olycka och våld har övertygat honom om att ödet förbannat hans liv - och lett honom till att begå det brott han nu ska straffas för. Pascual Duartes familj anses vara den första romanen i den spanska tremendismo-rörelsen och har med sin realism och sitt fokus på en människa utanför samhällets normer jämförts med Albert Camus Främlingen. I översättning av Alfred Åkerlund. CAMILO JOSÉ CELA [1916-2002] var en spansk författare och en viktig röst i den samhällskritiska litteratur som växte fram under Franco-eran. Detta trots att hans första två romaner censurerades av diktaturen under många år. Celas debutroman, Pascual Duartes familj, är en av Spaniens mest lästa böcker genom tiderna. 1989 tilldelades han Nobelpriset i litteratur.

Mazurka for Two Dead Men, the culmination of Camilo José Cela‘s literary art, opens in 1936 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War: Lionheart Gamuzo is savagely murdered. In 1939, as the war ends, his brother avenges his death. For both deaths, the blind accordion player Gaudencio plays the same mazurka. Set in backward rural Galicia, Cela’s excellent novel portrays a reign of fools, and works like contrapuntal music, its themes calling and responding, alternately brutal, melancholy, funny, lyrical, and coarse.

Widely regarded as one of the best works by the winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize for Literature, San Camilo, 1936 appears here for the first time in English translation. One of Spain’s most popular writers, Camilo JosÉ Cela is recognized for his experiments with language and with difficult subject matter. In San Camilo, 1936, first published in 1969, these concerns converge in a fascinating narrative that is as challenging as it is rewarding, as troubling as it is compelling.A story of history as it happens, by turns confusing and startingly clear, echoing with news and rumors, defined by grand gestures and intimate pauses, the novel leads the reader into the ordinary life of extraordinary times. Beginning on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, San Camilo, 1936 follows a twenty-year-old student’s attempts to sort out his private affairs (sex, money, career) in the midst of the turmoil overtaking his country. In vivid and richly textured prose that distinguishes Cela’s work, the emotional reality of civil war takes on a vibrant immediacy that is humorous, tender, and ultimately transforming as a young man tries to come to terms with the historical moment he inhabits-and hopes to survive. Readers new to Cela will find in this novel ample reason for the author’s growing reputation among audiences worldwide.

Confined to a prison cell, thrice-murderer Pascual Duarte recounts his journey from a violent childhood to a life of pain and misfortune; juxtaposing tableaus of country poverty against scenes of bare brutality, Nobel laureate Camilo José Cela crafts a powerful meditation on cruelty and anomie. The Family of Pascual Duarte follows his upbringing in the poor Spanish province of Extremadura to his eventual imprisonment—and impending death sentence. Death permeates Duarte’s world: his father’s grotesque death to rabies, his young brother’s drowning in an oil vat, and the loss of his children. But it is his wife’s sudden death that condemns him to the darkest path when, losing all faith and driven by blind revenge, he kills her souteneur. Now an alien to the world around him, Pascual Duarte resigns himself to his bloodied fate—yet never gives up his search for peace.Camilo José Cela has been recognized as one of the pioneers of Spanish literary realism, and his masterwork The Family of Pascual Duarte proves the power of his prose. The novel, which birthed the transgressive and groundbreaking tremendismo movement, roils with emotion and unflinching inhumanity, painting the Spanish countryside in bloodshed, eroticism, and an unshakeable feeling of grief. Blending the political with the personal with the philosophic, the result is an unparalleled exploration of the fraught relationship between man and society, and the past’s inescapable hold on the present.

Confined to a prison cell, thrice-murderer Pascual Duarte recounts his journey from a violent childhood to a life of pain and misfortune; juxtaposing tableaus of country poverty against scenes of bare brutality, Nobel laureate Camilo José Cela crafts a powerful meditation on cruelty and anomie. 

The Family of Pascual Duarte follows his upbringing in the poor Spanish province of Extremadura to his eventual imprisonment—and impending death sentence. Death permeates Duarte’s world: his father’s grotesque death to rabies, his young brother’s drowning in an oil vat, and the loss of his children. But it is his wife’s sudden death that condemns him to the darkest path when, losing all faith and driven by blind revenge, he kills her souteneur. Now an alien to the world around him, Pascual Duarte resigns himself to his bloodied fate—yet never gives up his search for peace.

Camilo José Cela has been recognized as one of the pioneers of Spanish literary realism, and his masterwork The Family of Pascual Duarte proves the power of his prose. The novel, which birthed the transgressive and groundbreaking tremendismo movement, roils with emotion and unflinching inhumanity, painting the Spanish countryside in bloodshed, eroticism, and an unshakeable feeling of grief. Blending the political with the personal with the philosophic, the result is an unparalleled exploration of the fraught relationship between man and society, and the past’s inescapable hold on the present.

Complete and uncensored in English for the very first time, a fragmented, daringly irreverent depiction of decadence and decay in Franco's Spain written by the 1989 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.The translator Anthony Kerrigan compared Camilo José Cela, the 1989 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, to Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Curzio Malaparte—all “ferocious writers, truculent, badly spoken, even foulmouthed.” However provocative and disturbing, Cela’s novels are also flat-out dazzling, their sentences as rigorous as they are riotous, lodging like knives in the reader’s mind. Cela called himself a proponent of “uglyism,” of “nothingism.” But he has the knack, to quote another critic, Américo Castro, of deploying those “nothings and lacks” to construct beauty.The Hive is set over the course of a few days in the Madrid of 1943, not long after the end of the Spanish Civil War, when the regime of General Francisco Franco was at its most oppressive. The book includes more than three hundred characters whose comings and goings it tracks to hypnotic effect. Scabrous, scandalous, and profane, The Hive is a virtuosic group portrait of a wounded and sick society.

In diesem Roman entfaltet Literaturnobelpreisträger Camilo José Cela das Panoptikum des Allzumenschlichen - die Liebe, die Eifersucht, der Ehebruch vor dem Hintergrund des Franco Regimes.Der Bienenkorb - das ist Madrid im Zweiten Weltkrieg, das ist das Cafe der Dona Rosa. Spiegel eines durch den Bürgerkrieg entwurzelten Kleinbürgertums und Drehpunkt vieler Lebensgeschichten. Von hier führen die Fäden in die Hinterhöfe, Parkanlagen und Absteigen Madrids, zu den Szenen von Liebe, Ehebruch und Eifersucht. So wird dieser beste Roman des Nobelpreisträgers zu einem eindrucksvollen Panoptikum aus dem Alltag einer faschistischen Gesellschaft.Der nach diesem Roman gedrehte Film von Mario Camus gewann 1983 den »Goldenen Bären« bei der Berlinale.

Lolita Franco (1912-1977) y Camilo José Cela (1916-2002) mantuvieron entre 1934 y 1943 una intensa correspondencia que nos acerca a la personalidad de la intelectual olvidada y esposa de Julián Marías, y a la fragua de un escritor que, en su juventud, luchaba por ser poeta. Cartas cruzadas en años turbulentos que ofrecen, al margen de lo literario, el pulso de «una mujer excepcional, inteligente, culta y sensible, con la cabeza clara y el sentimiento noble y sereno». Lolita Franco, alumna destacada de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Madrid (Ortega trató de convencerla para que fuese la primera mujer licenciada), guía los pasos literarios y vitales de Camilo mientras en el joven poeta crece el enamoramiento.De lo mundano y lo sublime nos tiende un epistolario único que desvela no solo la personalidad y figura de Dolores Franco, intelectual, profesora y traductora, sino a un Cela desconocido e inseguro que da sus primeros pasos.

La forja de un escritor recopila cincuenta artículos, escritos entre 1943 y 1952, ordenados en tres apartados temáticos que abarcan las experiencias vitales del joven artista, las reflexiones sobre la escritura, y las consideraciones sobre la pintura, el cine, la música o la fotografía. Proceden de periódicos y revistas como Arriba, La Vanguardia Española, Ínsula, La Tarde o Correo Literario.Los textos seleccionados ayudan a entender la obra creativa de Cela, así como otros aspectos de su personalidad.

Pascual Duarte sitter i fängelse i väntan på avrättning. För att fördriva tiden skriver han ner sin livshistoria som botgöring, förklaring och varning till andra att inte följa i samma fotspår. Det är en bister historia där Duartes erfarenhet av fattigdom, olycka och våld har övertygat honom om att ödet förbannat hans liv - och lett honom till att begå det brott han nu ska straffas för. Pascual Duartes familj anses vara den första romanen i den spanska tremendismo-rörelsen och har med sin realism och sitt fokus på en människa utanför samhällets normer jämförts med Albert Camus Främlingen. I översättning av Alfred Åkerlund. CAMILO JOSÉ CELA [1916-2002] var en spansk författare och en viktig röst i den samhällskritiska litteratur som växte fram under Franco-eran. Detta trots att hans första två romaner censurerades av diktaturen under många år. Celas debutroman, Pascual Duartes familj, är en av Spaniens mest lästa böcker genom tiderna. 1989 tilldelades han Nobelpriset i litteratur.

Mazurka for Two Dead Men, the culmination of Camilo José Cela‘s literary art, opens in 1936 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War: Lionheart Gamuzo is savagely murdered. In 1939, as the war ends, his brother avenges his death. For both deaths, the blind accordion player Gaudencio plays the same mazurka. Set in backward rural Galicia, Cela’s excellent novel portrays a reign of fools, and works like contrapuntal music, its themes calling and responding, alternately brutal, melancholy, funny, lyrical, and coarse.