Manuel Rivas – författare

It is the summer of 1936, the early months of the agonising civil war that engulfs Spain and shakes the rest of the world. In a prison in the pilgrim city of Santiago de Compostela, an artist sketches the famous porch of the cathedral, the Portico da Gloria. He uses a carpenter's pencil. But instead of reproducing the sculptured faces of the prophets and elders, he draws the faces of his fellow Republican prisoners. Many years later in post-Franco Spain, a survivor of that period, Doctor Daniel da Barca, returns from exile to his native Galicia, and the threads of past memories begin to be woven together. This poetic and moving novel conveys the horror and savagery of the tragedy that divided Spain, and the experiences of the men and women who lived through it. Yet in the process, it also relates one of the most beautiful love stories imaginable.

Many readers outside Spain do not know that the acclaimed novelist, Manuel Rivas, is a significant poet in his homeland, writing in his native Galician. This volume redresses the balance, offering a bilingual edition of his 2009 collection A desaparicion da neve, which, in an unusal move, was published in four national languages under one set of covers-Galician, Castilian, Catalan and Basque.

For Manuel Rivas, words are the most sensitive of creatures. In the same way that frogs or glow-worms are the first to manifest signs of pollution in the natural environment, words suffer as a result of corruption in the socio-political sphere. In his work as journalist, writer of fiction, poetry or essays, he is consistent in his role as custodian of all sensitive creatures; his writings document historical damage and alert us to potential future harm to our natural, linguistic and political eco-systems."Rivas is, without doubt, the most important figure (and the best known) in contemporary Galician literature [...]. His fictions bear the tone of an oral tale."-Alberto Manguel"Manuel Rivas is an important storyteller because he is sensitive and has an incredible ear, which, in his fiction, is allied to great integrity."-John Berger"Rivas is an indisputable classic" -The Scotsman"An author who knows how to introduce poetry, not only in his phrasing, but also in his way of seeing the world." - Raphaelle Rerolle, Le Monde

The Last Days of Terranova tells of "Vicenzo Fontana", the elderly owner of the long-standing Terranova Bookstore, on the day its set to close due to the greed of real-estate speculators. On this final day, he spends the night in his beloved store filled with more than seventy years of fugitive histories. Jumping from the present to various points in the past, the novel ferries us back to his childhood, when his father first opened the store, to the years that the store was run by his Uncle "Eliseo", and to the years in the lead-up to the democratic transition, which Vicenzo spent as far away from the bookstore as possible, in Madrid. Like the bookstore itself, The Last Days of Terranova is a space crammed with stories, histories, and literary references, and as many nooks, crannies, and complexities, brought to life in Rivass vital prose.

Text in Arabic. Set in the dark days of the Spanish Civil War, Qalam an-Najjar charts the linked destinies of Dr Daniel Da Barca, the Republican who cheats death in Francos prisons, and Herbal, the illiterate Falangist, and of the unnamed painter with the carpenters pencil, the man who unites them in life and death. All are bound together by the events of the Civil War -- the artists and the peasants alike -- and all haunted by the power of the carpenters pencil.