Search results for ""Author Javier Cercas""

Nueva edición de Soldados de Salamina, novela imprescindible del siglo XXI, revisada a fondo por el autor y rematada por un esclarecedor epílogo escrito por él mismo. A finales de enero de 1939, apenas dos meses antes del final de la guerra civil, un grupo de prisioneros franquistas es fusilado cerca la frontera francesa por soldados republicanos que huyen hacia el exilio. Entre esos prisioneros se halla Rafael Sánchez Mazas, fundador e ideólogo de la Falange, poeta y futuro ministro de Franco, quien consigue milagrosamente escapar y ocultarse en el bosque mientras los republicanos lo persiguen; hasta que un soldado lo descubre, lo encañona y, mirándolo a los ojos, le perdona la vida. Sesenta años más tarde, un novelista fracasado descubre por azar este enterrado episodio bélico y, fascinado por él, emprende una investigación para aclarar sus circunstancias y desentrañar su significado. ¿

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Algunos años después de los hechos narrados en Independencia, Melchor Marín ha abandonado los mossos d?esquadra y trabaja como bibliotecario en Gandesa, en la Terra Alta. Cosette, su hija, es una adolescente rebelde, que no comprende que su padre le haya ocultado cómo murió su madre, y que decide irse a Mallorca con su mejor amiga a pasar unas cortas vacaciones. Cuando no vuelve ni contesta a las llamadas al móvil, Melchor Marín, con el instinto de policía experimentado, sin perder un segundo decide plantarse en la isla para rastrear sus últimos movimientos. Alguien le habla de la mansión de un multimillonario en un extremo de la isla, cerca de Pollença, donde invitan a chicas jóvenes a participar en fiestas lujosas. Melchor Marín necesitará ayuda. Más que nunca. Y contar con amigos para una misión suicida. Se jugarán la vida con él? Servirá para algo?

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Lord of All the Dead is a courageous journey into Javier Cercas'' family history and that of a country collapsing from a fratricidal war. The author revisits Ibahernando, his parents'' village in southern Spain, to research the life of Manuel Mena. This ancestor, dearly loved by Cercas'' mother, died in combat at the age of nineteen during the battle of the Ebro, the bloodiest episode in Spain''s history. Who was Manuel Mena? A fascist hero whose memory is an embarrassment to the author, or a young idealist who happened to fight on the wrong side? And how should we judge him, as grandchildren and great-grandchildren of that generation, interpreting history from our supposed omniscience and the misleadingperspective of a present full of automatic answers, that fails to consider the particularities of each personal and family drama?Wartime epics, heroism and death are some of the underlying themes of this unclassifiable novel that combines road trips, person

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Más de quince años después de la publicación de Soldados de Salamina, Javier Cercas regresa a la Guerra Civil con una novela más íntima y personal, que indaga en el pasado más incómodo de su familia.Ninguna familia escapa a su herencia.Sobre los vencedores y los vencidos, y los secretos que todos callamos. Esta es la novela que Javier Cercas se había estado preparando para escribir desde que quiso ser novelista. O desde antes. El monarca de las sombras narra la búsqueda del rastro perdido de un muchacho casi anónimo que peleó por una causa injusta y murió en el lado equivocado de la historia. Se llamaba Manuel Mena y en 1936, al estallar la guerra civil, se incorporó al ejército de Franco; dos años después murió combatiendo en la batalla del Ebro, y durante décadas se convirtió en el héroe oficial de su familia. Era tío abuelo de Javier Cercas, quien siempre se negó a indagar en su historia, hasta que se sintió obligado a hacerlo. El resultado

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Tomando como punto de partida un insignificante episodio de la guerra civil española, " Soldados de Salamina " es una novela sobre la vocación literaria, sobre el sentido y el valor de las ficciones narrativas y también sobre el heroísmo moral.Novela metaficcional (sobre la gestación de un relato real) evoluciona ante nuestros ojos y cambia de piel hacia una novela comprometida: desde la neurosis de un escritoren el dique seco, hacia una toma de conciencia de la responsabilidad que el presente contrae con la memoria traumática del pasado.Desde su publicación, ha sido el mayor fenómeno literario, por sus cifras de ventas, por su repercusión social y mediática, por su recepción crítica, de la narrativa española en lo que llevamos de siglo XXI. Esta edición, con introducción y notas, recoge, además, las variantes de la edición de 2015 respecto de la primera edición y ofrece un apéndice con distintos materiales que contextualizan la génesis de la novela.

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Ésta es la historia de una amistad que empieza en 1987, cuando el narrador, un joven aspirante a novelista, viaja a una universidad del Medio Oeste estadounidense y conoce a Rodney Falk, su compañero de despacho, un ex combatiente de Vietnam huraño e inabordable, ferozmente lúcido y corroído en secreto por su pasado. Pero ésta es también la historia de una experiencia radical en el abismo indescifrable del mal y la culpa, que el propio narrador sólo logrará entender y asumir años más tarde, como en una fulguración, cuando conozca el éxito y lo que éste tiene de corrupción insidiosa. Para entonces la figura imprecisa de Rodney y su historia devastadora se le acabarán imponiendo con la fuerza de lo necesario, como un emblema de su propia historia, y acaso de la condición humana. Con una escritura de engañosa transparencia y una trama que no da tregua al lector, La velocidad de la luz indaga en nuestra ilimitada capacidad de hacer daño, en la infinita estupidez de la guerra y en la infini

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Encuadernación: RústicaColección: Literatura Mondadori

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Tras el éxito de Terra Alta, vuelve Melchor Marín.Tengo a Javier Cercas por uno de los mejores escritores de nuestra lengua. Mario Vargas Llosa, El PaísEl mejor Javier Cercas. Una formidable novela. J. M. Pozuelo Yvancos, Abc CulturalEl nuevo Cercas vuelve a brillar. Jordi Amat, La VanguardiaCómo enfrentarse a quienes manejan el poder en las sombras? Cómo vengarse de quienes más daño te han hecho? Vuelve Melchor Marín. Y vuelve a Barcelona, donde es reclamado para investigar un caso vidrioso: están chantajeando con un vídeo sexual a la alcaldesa de la ciudad. Cargado con su pesar por no haber encontrado a los asesinos de su madre, pero también con su inflexible sentido de la justicia y su rocosa integridad moral, Melchor debe desmontar una extorsión que no se sabe si persigue el simple beneficio económico o la desestabilización política, y, para hacerlo, se adentra en los círculos del poder, un lugar donde reinan el ci

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Novela galardonada con el Premio PlanetaUn crimen terrible sacude la apacible comarca de la Terra Alta: los propietarios de su mayor empresa, Gráficas Adell, aparecen asesinados tras haber sido sometidos a atroces torturas. Se encarga del caso Melchor Marín, un joven policía y lector voraz llegado desde Barcelona cuatro años atrás, con un oscuro pasado a cuestas que le ha convertido en una leyenda del cuerpo y que cree haber enterrado bajo su vida feliz como marido de la bibliotecaria del pueblo y padre de una niña llamada Cosette, igual que la hija de Jean Valjean, el protagonista de su novela favorita: Los miserables. Partiendo de ese suceso, y a través de una narración trepidante y repleta de personajes memorables, esta novela se convierte en una lúcida reflexión sobre el valor de la ley, la posibilidad de la justicia y la legitimidad de la venganza, pero sobre todo en la epopeya de un hombre en busca de su lugar en el mundo.Cercas se ha reinventado como autor

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The mayor of Barcelona is being blackmailed.A sex tape from her student days - one she never knew existed. The price: 300,000 euros and her immediate resignation.A political chameleon who swept to power on a populist wave, she has her enemies. Nor can she trust those closest to her. Both her ex-husband and her deputy would profit from her fall.Melchor Marín, living a quiet life in Terra Alta, is tempted back to Barcelona to work the case. But what seemed a simple matter has its roots in far more serious and disturbing crimes.With the mayor on the verge of capitulation, a shock revelation changes everything - not least the course of Melchor''s life. At long last, his heart''s dark desire is in his grasp. Praise for Even the Darkest NightA gem of a book, easily the best I''ve read this year M W CravenA wonderful novel. I look forward to many more Melchor stories A N WilsonThe first in wh

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_______________ ‘Richly imagined, suspenseful and surprisingly poignant ... a reminder of how Spanish history might have taken a dramatically different turn' - Financial Times ‘Persuasive, brilliant and absorbing' - Economist 'Cercas is a master storyteller' - Independent _______________ A suspenseful, dramatic novel by the author of Soldiers of Salamis, translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean In February 1981, just as Spain was finally leaving Franco's dictatorship and during the first democratic vote in parliament for a new prime minister, Colonel Tejero and a band of right-wing soldiers burst into the Spanish parliament and began firing shots. Only three members of Congress defied the incursion and did not dive for cover: Adolfo Suarez, the then-outgoing prime minister, who had steered the country away from the Franco era; Guttierez Mellado, a conservative general who had loyally served democracy; and Santiago Carillo, the head of the Communist Party, which had just been legalised. In The Anatomy of a Moment, Cercas examines a key moment in Spanish history, just as he did so successfully in his Spanish Civil War novel, Soldiers of Salamis. This is the only coup ever to have been caught on film as it was happening, which, as Cercas says, 'guaranteed both its reality and its unreality'. Every February a few seconds of the video are shown again and Spaniards congratulate themselves for standing up for democracy, but Cercas says that things were very quiet that afternoon and evening while all over Spain people stayed inside waiting for the coup to be defeated ... or to triumph. _______________ ‘A brilliant reconfiguring of a key event in contemporary European history. Audacious and wholly fascinating' - William Boyd ‘An almost Shakespearean account of soldiers, politicians, mixed motives and the lust for power' - Anne Chisholm, Sunday Telegraph 'A mesmerising achievement' - Literary Review

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LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL 2018A TRUE STORY THAT IS PACKED WITH FICTION - FICTION CREATED BY ITS MAIN CHARACTER, ENRIC MARCOBut who is Enric Marco? A veteran of the Spanish Civil War, a fighter against fascism, an impassioned campaigner for justice, and a survivor of the Nazi death camps? Or, is he simply an old man with delusions of grandeur, a charlatan who fabricated his heroic war record, who was never a prisoner in the Third Reich and never opposed Franco; a charming, beguiling and compulsive liar who refashioned himself as a defender of liberty and who was unmasked in 2005 at the height of his influence and renown?In this extraordinary novel - part narrative, part history, part essay, part biography, part autobiography - Javier Cercas unravels the enigma of the man and delves with passion and honesty into the most ambiguous aspects of what makes us human - our infinite capacity for self-deception, our need for conformity, our thirst for affection and our conflicting needs for fiction and for truth.Translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne

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Lord of All the Dead is a courageous journey into Javier Cercas' family history and that of a country collapsing from a fratricidal war. The author revisits Ibahernando, his parents' village in southern Spain, to research the life of Manuel Mena. This ancestor, dearly loved by Cercas' mother, died in combat at the age of nineteen during the battle of the Ebro, the bloodiest episode in Spain's history. Who was Manuel Mena? A fascist hero whose memory is an embarrassment to the author, or a young idealist who happened to fight on the wrong side? And how should we judge him, as grandchildren and great-grandchildren of that generation, interpreting history from our supposed omniscience and the misleadingperspective of a present full of automatic answers, that fails to consider the particularities of each personal and family drama?Wartime epics, heroism and death are some of the underlying themes of this unclassifiable novel that combines road trips, personal confessions, war stories and historical scholarship, finally becoming an incomparable tribute to the author's mother and the incurable scars of an entire generation.Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

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WINNER OF THE CWA DAGGER FOR CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION "A gem of a book, easily the best I've read this year. A contemporary police procedural with a literary edge. I was rooting for the flawed, but deeply compassionate Melchor Marín from the first page to the last. Highly recommended" M W CravenTwo dead at the Adell house . . .But nothing in the duty officer's report can prepare Melchor Marín for what he finds. A wealthy couple tortured to death in an almost ritualistic manner. The little town of Gandesa in the backwater region of TerraAlta, Catalonia, is suddenly at the eye of a media storm.Melchor is no stranger to notoriety. He was sent to Terra Alta to lie low after foiling a terrorist attack. And, beforethat, he was jailed for his role as driver for a Colombian drug cartel, his decision to join the police inspired by adesire to avenge his mother's murder and a copy of Les Misérables from the prison library.Gradually, the leads in the Adell case dry up, and Melchor is ordered to back off. He doesn't, willing to sacrifice his reputation and career in a ruthless pursuit of the truth. But dusk is already falling on the darkest night of his life.Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

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LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL 2018A TRUE STORY THAT IS PACKED WITH FICTION - FICTION CREATED BY ITS MAIN CHARACTER, ENRIC MARCOBut who is Enric Marco? A veteran of the Spanish Civil War, a fighter against fascism, an impassioned campaigner for justice, and a survivor of the Nazi death camps? Or, is he simply an old man with delusions of grandeur, a charlatan who fabricated his heroic war record, who was never a prisoner in the Third Reich and never opposed Franco; a charming, beguiling and compulsive liar who refashioned himself as a defender of liberty and who was unmasked in 2005 at the height of his influence and renown?In this extraordinary novel - part narrative, part history, part essay, part biography, part autobiography - Javier Cercas unravels the enigma of the man and delves with passion and honesty into the most ambiguous aspects of what makes us human - our infinite capacity for self-deception, our need for conformity, our thirst for affection and our conflicting needs for fiction and for truth.Translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne

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The mayor of Barcelona is being blackmailed.A sex tape from her student days - one she never knew existed. The price: 300,000 euros and her immediate resignation.A political chameleon who swept to power on a populist wave, she has her enemies. Nor can she trust those closest to her. Both her ex-husband and her deputy would profit from her fall.Melchor Marín, living a quiet life in Terra Alta, is tempted back to Barcelona to work the case. But what seemed a simple matter has its roots in far more serious and disturbing crimes.With the mayor on the verge of capitulation, a shock revelation changes everything - not least the course of Melchor's life. At long last, his heart's dark desire is in his grasp. Praise for Even the Darkest Night"A gem of a book, easily the best I've read this year" M W Craven"A wonderful novel. I look forward to many more Melchor stories" A N Wilson"The first in what promises to be an excellent series" GuardianTranslated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

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_______________ 'His novels probe the sore spots and raw wounds of contemporary Spain, their cunning and complexity leavened by a light touch and an easy, graceful style' - Boyd Tonkin, Independent on Sunday 'The beauty of this intelligently probing novel is that one is left wondering if we ever truly know anything about anybody – that anybody including ourselves' - Scotsman 'Compelling ... the real strengths of the book are in Cercas’s unadorned prose, once again deftly translated by Anne McLean, and in his ear for the rhythms of everyday speech' - Guardian _______________ Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2016, this novel from the author of Soldiers of Salamis and The Anatomy of a Moment tells the story of three teenage outsiders in post-Franco Spain In the late 1970s, as Spain was adrift between the death of Franco and the rebirth of democracy, people were moving from the poor south to the cities of the north in search of a better life. But the work, when there was any, was poorly paid and the housing squalid. Out of this world of limited opportunities a generation of delinquents arose whose prospects were stifled and whose rebellion would be brief and violent… One summer’s day in Gerona a bespectacled, sixteen-year-old Ignacio Cañas, known to his few friends as Gafitas, is working in an amusement arcade, when a charismatic teenager walks in with the most beautiful girl Cañas has ever seen. Zarco and Tere take over his pinball machine and his life. Thirty years on and now a successful criminal defence lawyer, Cañas has tried to put that long, hot summer of drugs, yearning and delinquency behind him. But when Tere appears in his office and asks him to represent El Zarco, who has been in prison all this time, what else can Gafitas do but accept? A powerful novel of love and hate, of loyalty and betrayal, of true integrity and the prison celebrity can become, Outlaws confirms Javier Cercas as one of the most thrilling novelists writing anywhere in the world today. _______________ 'Cercas adroitly balances the earlier criminal thrills with the later moral and emotional complexities' - New Statesman 'A moving meditation on youth, love, betrayal and the media, as well as an uncompromising political novel. Cercas has yet again expanded our idea of what fiction can do' - Juan Gabriel Vasquez, author of The Secret History of Costaguana

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The International Bestseller of the Spanish Civil War - Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction PrizeIn the final moments of the Spanish Civil War, fifty prominent Nationalist prisoners are executed by firing squad. Among them is the writer and fascist Rafael Sanchez Mazas. As the guns fire, he escapes into the forest, and can hear a search party and their dogs hunting him down. The branches move and he finds himself looking into the eyes of a militiaman, and faces death for the second time that day. But the unknown soldier simply turns and walks away. Sanchez Mazas becomes a national hero and the soldier disappears into history. As Cercas sifts the evidence to establish what happened, he realises that the true hero may not be Sanchez Mazas at all, but the soldier who chose not to shoot him. Who was he? Why did he spare him? And might he still be alive?Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

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