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Prey for the Shadow
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" Guardian Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean
The Anatomy of a Moment
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 s...
Soldiers of Salamis
The International Bestseller of the Spanish Civil War - Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize In 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
Lord of All the Dead
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 misleading perspective 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
The Impostor
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL 2018 A TRUE STORY THAT IS PACKED WITH FICTION - FICTION CREATED BY ITS MAIN CHARACTER, ENRIC MARCO But 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
Outlaws
_______________ '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...
Fortress of Evil
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The Tenant and The Motive
The Tenant and The Motive are two darkly humorous novellas from the award-winning author of Soldiers of Salamis. The Tenant is the mischievous story of Mario Rota, a linguistics professor whose life starts to unravel after he twists his ankle while out jogging one day. A rival professor appears, takes over his classes and bewitches his girlfriend. Where will Rota's nightmare end - and where did it begin? The Motive is a satire about a writer, Álvaro, who becomes obsessed with finding the ideal inspiration for his novel. First he begins spying on his neighbours, then he starts leading them on, creating a reversal of the maxim that art follows life - with some dire consequences. Written with a supremely light touch, these witty novellas are enjoyable masterpieces that linger long in the memory.
The Speed of Light
_______________ 'Cercas's writing has echoes of Scott Fitzgerald in the intense, shining clarity of its emotion, and of Faulkner' - Independent 'A deeply affecting novel. A reflection on war, friendship, success and failure ... Cercas's novel carries a powerful warning for the war-hungry modern world' - Scotland on Sunday 'Presents his narrator's foibles in a lucid, supple prose, well-matched to the novel's darker elements' - Financial Times _______________ A sweeping story of youth and age, war and peace, love, friendship and the quest for meaning An aspiring young writer from Spain begins work as a teaching assistant on a Midwestern campus and finds himself sharing an office with Rodney Falk, a taciturn Vietnam veteran of strange ways and few friends. But when Rodney suddenly disappears the narrator becomes obsessed with discovering the secrets of his past. Why do people fear Rodney? What traumatic event happened at My Khe during the war? And, when the narrator's life takes a terrible twist, is Rodney the only person in the world who can save him?
Lord of All the Dead
A deeply personal work of historical interrogation from the acclaimed author of Outlaws. Javier Cercas, “the bard of [the] movement for the recovery of Spain’s suppressed memory” (The New York Times Book Review), unpacks the legacy of the Spanish Civil War by way of his own family’s history. Growing up, Cercas was inculcated with the legend of his beloved great-uncle, Manuel Mena, who died at nineteen in the bloodiest battle of the Spanish Civil War—while fighting for Franco. Who was this young man? A fascist hero whose memory is now an embarrassment or a committed idealist who happened to fall on the wrong side of history? In Lord of All the Dead, Cercas pieces together the life of his enigmatic relative and in so doing tells the story of an entire generation. Combining intimate family history, investigative scholarship, personal confession, and a novelist’s imagination, Cercas has crafted a transcendent portrait of a country’s indelible scars, a book about heroism, death, the persistence of the past, and the meaning of an individual life against the tapestry of history.
