The Spanish novel in a turbulent century. This collection of studies by eighteen prominent theorists and critics offers a diverse panorama of the modern Spanish novel seen through the prism of Spain's recent political, cultural and ideological history. It considers the development of the novel as a social mirror and as a changing literary form, torn between the tradition of stern realism and the aesthetics of rupture affecting all Western literature from the Avant-Garde to the Postmodern age. While some essays emphasise the Spanish cultural context and canonical writers, others are of a broader nature, grouping lesser-known writers under certain literary tendencies: the metaphysical novel, the urban novel, recuperative accounts of the Civil War, feminine first-person narrations, and the rise of the popular detective, historical, and erotic novels. Three studies address the resurgence of the Catalan, Basque and Galician novel and their departure from a poetics of identity to one of global concerns. Interdisciplinary approaches address the reciprocal impacts of literature and cinema, and the effects of the marketplace on the consumption of fiction are not forgotten. The Companion provides ample bibliographies and a valuable chronology, while all titles and quotations are translated into English. Contributors: Marta E. Altisent, Katarzyna Olga Beilin, Ramon Buckley, Jose F. Colmeiro, Stacey Dolgin Casado, Sebastiaan Faber, David K. Herzberger, Carlos Alex Longhurst, Kathleen N. March, Cristina Martinez-Carazo, Alfredo Martinez Exposito, Nina L. Molinaro, Gonzalo Navajas, Mari Jose Olaziregi, Janet D. Perez, Randolph D. Pope, Josep Miquel Sobrer, H. Rosi Song.

A detailed and lively discussion and analysis of the novels, short stories, newspaper columns, and other works of one of the most important and popular writers in Spain today. This book provides the most comprehensive study to date of the full range of Marias' writing, including discussion and analysis of his literary and intellectual formation, his development as a novelist and short story writer, andhis unique perspective offered in nearly twenty-five years of newspaper columns on topics ranging from religion to football. Above all, Marias is examined as a writer of fictions. As a translator of several canonical works from English to Spanish, Marias came to appreciate the preciseness of words as well as their ambiguity, their capacity to represent as well as their propensity to distort. The author examines Marias's constant awareness of how languagecan be used to construct stories as the foundation for engaging the world as well as for imagining it. The nature of Marias's storytelling, and the way in which he imagines, form the principal focus of this Companion. David K. Herzberger is Professor and Chair of the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of California, Riverside.

The relationship between fiction and historiography in Francoist Spain (1939-1975) is a contentious one. The intricacies of this relationship, in which fiction works to subvert the regime's authority to write the past, are the focus of David K. Herzberger's book.
The narrative and rhetorical strategies of historical discourse figure in both the fiction and historiography of postwar Spain. Herzberger analyzes these strategies, identifying the structures and vocabularies they use to frame the past and endow it with particular meanings. He shows how Francoist historians sought to affirm the historical necessity of Franco by linking the regime to a heroic and Christian past, while several types of postwar fiction--such as social realism, the novel of memory, and postmodern novels--created a voice of opposition to this practice. Focusing on the concept of writing history that these opposing strategies convey, Herzberger discloses the layering of truth and meaning that lies at the heart of postwar Spanish narrative from the early 1940s to the fall of Franco. His study clearly reveals how the novel in postwar Spain became a crucial form of dissent from the past as it was conceived and used by the State.
Making a decisive intervention in the debate about the ways in which narration determines both the meaning and truth of history and fiction, Narrating the Past will be of special interest to students and scholars of the politics, history, and literature of twentieth-century Spain.

There are reasons to believe that Camilo Jose Cela knew perfectly well what he was doing as he wrote, between 1945 and 1950, -La colmena-, a novel that would counterweight the positive image the Franco regime was striving to build. In his foreword to the first edition Cela justifies and describes his text as a -pale reflection ... a humble shadow of the daily, harsh, deep and painful reality.- His portrait of a sad and desperate Madrid immediately drew the attention of the censors: the novel was banned in Spain until 1955, four years after its first edition was released in Argentina. The idea of portraying the daily Madrid reality constitutes the very essence of -La colmena- and, quite paradoxically, gives the text its universal reach. In the first place -La colmena- is a novel with no main character or plot in a traditional sense: a host of characters (more than three hundred between real and fictitious) and sub-plots, run along the streets in this intricate work. Its unity, though, resides in the most frequently mentioned character, Martin Marco, whose wanderings along the distinct Madrid boroughs and spaces render the novel a certain structural coherence. At the same time the novel sets the -hive- characteristic right from its title, so the laborious existence of the characters allow the reader to explore the diverse corners of the city and the people that strive to survive there. But the -hive- image is also a paradox. Undoubtedly there is the racket and constant movement, but the teeming characters are portrayed as unemployed worker bees, thus without purpose or hope. In this sense Cela's Madrid is a space in which misery, poverty and decay are deeply rooted. The inhabitants of this city do not know where they are going to, or what is their purpose or destiny. And it will be from here that the most relevant topic of -La colmena- -solitude and isolation- stems. There is no real communication between characters as they all live immersed in their own, isolated, existential vacuum. -La colmena- became an immediate inspirational model for a new generation of young writers, that started publishing in the '50s centering their interests in the exploration of the social and political conditions of their present Spain. Though Cela abandoned the detailed depiction of reality in his following work (-Mrs. Caldwell habla con su hijo-, 1953) -La colmena- stood as a reference for the social realistic novel during a decade. For many writers, mainly those who foresaw to use their narrative works as social and political tools to criticize The Franco regime, Cela's novel became the indisputable starting point, both to reveal and transform the Spain ill-being.

A detailed and lively discussion and analysis of the novels, short stories, newspaper columns, and other works of one of the most important and popular writers in Spain today. This book provides the most comprehensive study to date of the full range of Marías' writing, including discussion and analysis of his literary and intellectual formation, his development as a novelist and short story writer, andhis unique perspective offered in nearly twenty-five years of newspaper columns on topics ranging from religion to football. Above all, Marías is examined as a writer of fictions. As a translator of several canonical works from English to Spanish, Marías came to appreciate the preciseness of words as well as their ambiguity, their capacity to represent as well as their propensity to distort. The author examines Marías's constant awareness of how languagecan be used to construct stories as the foundation for engaging the world as well as for imagining it. The nature of Marías's storytelling, and the way in which he imagines, form the principal focus of this Companion. David K. Herzberger is Professor and Chair of the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of California, Riverside.