"Requiem per un campesino espanol" was first published under the title Mosen Millan in Coleccion Aquelarre,Mexico, 1953. The present text follows the first Spanish edition published by Destino, Barcelona, 1974, which bears a few minor variants, mainly in paragraph structure. It has been reprinted a number of times and translated into many languages and is one of the most widely read Spanish texts in the 20th century. This edition is aimed primarily at sixth-formers and university undergraduates and the introduction and notes have been compiled in the light of recent socio-politial topic-based syllabuses and communication studies courses. The inclusion in the introduction of a substantial section on the now out-of-print "Contraataque" (1937), the wartime narrative which contains the germ of the post-war novel, is intended to provide the student with a context for the study of the process in Sender's writing inspired by the Civil War - from explicit militant propaganda penned in the heat of battle to implicit poetic parable, historical emotion recollected in the comparative tranquillity and distance of exile. It is hoped that such a juxtaposition will illuminate both the content and literary achievement of "Requiem". -- .

This is a new release of the original 1938 edition.

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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

To read Iman (1930) by Ramon J. Sender is to sail into a vertiginous trip within the darkest aspects of the human being. A man, a soldier striving to survive along endless days and nights in a desert landscape, without further protection besides his scarce strengths, surrounded by death, violence, horror. A shockingly compelling novel, both harsh and beautiful, written in a prose that attains lyricism heights seldom seen in war novels, that has the power to immerse the reader into the nameless world that lies beyond the madness frontier. With this, his first novel Ramon J. Sender (Spain 1901- USA 1982) immediately became one of the most important XX Century Spanish novelists. Iman, a novel full of aggravation provoked by the senseless powers that ruled Spain, sympathetic towards those who died, accuser against those who took advantage of the young lives of the Spanish people, played a key role in the Spanish monarchy fall and the subsequent arrival of the Republic. But its literary and universal claim values make it stand as the chronicle of the unleashed barbarism inherent to each and every war. Almost a century after the narrated episodes it still makes for a reading that leaves no room for indifference. In this edition the introductory study by Borja Rodriguez Gutierrez and the footnotes allow the modern reader to grasp and enjoy the Sender text in its full masterpiece magnitude.

Rquiem por un campesino espaol, a short, elegant and moving account of the tragic effects of the Spanish Civil War on a small Aragonese population, is often called Ramn J. Sender's greatest masterpiece. It was the author's own favorite book and -in his own words- of all his novels it is "the simplest, and the most universal." This characteristic of "universality" flows through all Sender's writings, while he manages to still be the most Spanish of the generation that began to write just before the onset of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. As a journalist who allied himself with the Republican side in the Spanish civil war, Sender (1901-82) was a privileged eyewitness to Spain's struggle, suffering and defeat, a situation he continued to write about after he left Spain in 1938. While his texts are considered essential source material by historians of this era, at the same time, the anguish and pain, losses and victories of the profoundly Spanish characters are portrayed as universal emotions and experiences that continue to move readers of all nationalities. Within Hispanic literature, Rquiem por un campesino espaol (first published in Mexico in 1953, banned in Spain for many years) is considered to stand on a par with Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea within North American literature. Both are brief and profound, and recount intense, dramatic stories that initially seem uncomplicated. They are both important novels that in their brevity and apparent simplicity continue to resonate with essential truths. Three qualities of the novel are emphasized in the essay by Prof. Borja Rodrguez Gutirrez that introduces this edition: the story's meticulous, mathematical structure devised by a self aware writer; its use of reiteration of certain key elements; and the carefully structured allegory with which it transmits its denunciation of the injustice and treachery that underlie history. The careful lexicographic notes included will help the modern reader grasp the plot in all its dramatic, Spanish, intensity.