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El vent de la nit
“La guerra és una fulana que t’emmetzina la sang per sempre”, escriu Joan Sales a Incerta glòria. A El vent de la nit se’n mesura l’abast. La mena de pau de després de la guerra és la nit enrarida i malalta de trenta anys de franquisme esbudellada per un supervivent, en Cruells. Ell és l’únic de la seva brigada que ha tornat al país després de la derrota. Guerra, amor i joventut són tres estats d’excepció; la sortida, un terreny d’on sorgeixen monstres. Viure és caminar en la fosca d’un túnel on el temps s’ha estancat, on la humanitat s’ha tornat fantasmal. Però l’esperança de trobar el rastre dels desapareguts no minva, i pot portar-te a buscar la companyia de l’enemic amb qui has compatit la joventut i la guerra. Si resulta que es diu Lamoneda, l’altra cara serà insuportablement estrafeta i l’hauràs d’aguantar mentre visquis, o mentre visqui ell.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
6 people are currently reading
182 people want to read
About the author
Joan Sales
20 books15 followersJoan Sales, novelista, poeta, traductor i editor. Després d'un exili de nou anys, a causa de la seva participació en la Guerra Civil espanyola, esdevé un dels editors més eficaços en la represa cultural catalana. El 1955 és un dels fundadors d'El Club dels Novel·listes, una col·lecció que es transforma més tard en l'editoral Club Editor, la qual, sota la seva direcció, publica algunes de les novel·les que marquen fites en la narrativa catalana de postguerra, com La plaça del Diamant, de Mercè Rodoreda o Bearn, de Llorenç Villalonga, entre d'altres. La seva obra més ambiciosa, la novel·la Incerta glòria, evoluciona des d'una primera versió de 335 pàgines publicada el 1956 a una de definitiva de 910 pàgines el 1971, que revisa encara dos anys abans de morir. Considerada una de les grans novel·les de la literatura catalana del segle XX, és guardonada amb el Premi Joanot Martorell (1955), el Premi Ramon Llull (1968) i el Premi Ciutat de Barcelona (1970). El 1976 publica la recopilació epistolar, Cartes a Màrius Torres (1936-1941), una obra que aporta dades d'interès per aprofundir en la personalitat dels dos autors i en l'atmosfera enrarida de la Catalunya de l'època.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
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August 13, 2024Joan Sales és el meu senyor rus trist preferit de les lletres catalanes 💙
March 16, 2025
«¡Oh, si aparegués aquella pàtria terrenal que somniàvem, com un besllum de la celestial! Somnis en veritat innocents, però tan profundament arrelats en el nostre cor... ¡Retrobar la pàtria i la llibertat com qui retroba la casa dels avis després d'errabundejar anys i més anys esgarriat i sense sostre! Hi ha moments que hi crec; les esperances d'altre temps tornen com ocells que retrobessin els nius oblidats, ¡el caliu perdura sota l'enorme munt de cendra!» 🍃
January 14, 2021
Li hauria donat 5 estrelles si no se m'hagués fet tan feixuc el final. Igualment, el llibre es boníssim, et permet navegar extensament per una ment trista, nostalgiosa i neurastènica, com ell ja s'encarrega de dir. Queda clar que Joan Sales té una retòrica impecable.
October 14, 2015
Ressenya completa: http://www.entrelletres.cat/2015/10/e...
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January 15, 2026Resulta que Incerta Glòria té una segona part i, aquesta, originalment era un epíleg siutat ja en ple franquisme narrat per en Cruells. Parlant clar: si et va encantar Incerta Glòria (aka si tens bon gust) segurament també t'agradarà El vent de la nit. És inevitable buscar més Joan Sales, tot i que aquesta segona part no està al mateix calibre que la primera (per mi IC és top 1 de la literatura catalana).
En Cruells, ja un sexagenari, té una visió ara àmplia tant de la guerra com de la postguerra, però s'ha tornat tant "neurastènic" (com es diu al llibre) que a estones es fa pesat - les seves reflexiones teològiques avorreixen, i aquí no hi ha l'acció èpica d'IC (que justament arribava al seu clímax a la part d'en Cruells de l'original. Això sí, alguns personatges retornen i també nhi ha de nous, com ara en Lamoneda, un vell verd repugnant, tan patètic, que esdevé el punt més fort del llibre (tot i que també entenc que pot destrossar-lo per altra gent). És una espècie d'anti-Soleras que és incapaç d'entendre res, fins i tot quan ho té davant dels morros, un símbol perfecte del franquisme.
El vent de la nit és un bon llibre, però no una obre mestra: recomanat per qui no n'hagi tingut prou amb la primera part.
En Cruells, ja un sexagenari, té una visió ara àmplia tant de la guerra com de la postguerra, però s'ha tornat tant "neurastènic" (com es diu al llibre) que a estones es fa pesat - les seves reflexiones teològiques avorreixen, i aquí no hi ha l'acció èpica d'IC (que justament arribava al seu clímax a la part d'en Cruells de l'original. Això sí, alguns personatges retornen i també nhi ha de nous, com ara en Lamoneda, un vell verd repugnant, tan patètic, que esdevé el punt més fort del llibre (tot i que també entenc que pot destrossar-lo per altra gent). És una espècie d'anti-Soleras que és incapaç d'entendre res, fins i tot quan ho té davant dels morros, un símbol perfecte del franquisme.
El vent de la nit és un bon llibre, però no una obre mestra: recomanat per qui no n'hagi tingut prou amb la primera part.
August 6, 2025
Finishing this was a significant burden off my back. Conceived as the second and concluding part to Joan Sales' great masterpiece Uncertain Glory on the Spanish Civil War, this was rather heavy going for the most part. So, anyone expecting a breezy summer read should be warned beforehand. Told mostly in the first person and most of it in the form of lengthy dialogues interspersed by philosophical musings, this second instalment lays testimony and tries to answer a fundamental question of our existence and upbringing:
Is it possible to retain your faith and sanity amid the ravages wrought out by war?
A question, rather straightforward, but without any convincing answer. The survivors of the war are the only true witnesses of the spectacle, and they only bear testimony in the tragic aftermath when humanity and civilisation have been reduced to rubble. The author creates just such a protagonist who is, at once, a servant of god and a true witness. Reading this narrative, we get a glimpse of post-war Catalonia through the eyes of a chaplain struggling with his faith in the aftermath of brutal destruction.
This book is the follow-up, published almost thirty years later, to the author's acclaimed masterwork of the Spanish Civil War, and indeed it is a book brimming with extraordinary historical and philosophical resonance. The protagonist here is a Republican chaplain who had survived the war and then completes his theological studies only to lose his faith in a world where it seems all hope has been extinguished. Through his eyes, the author tries to paint a picture of the hopeless and shell-shocked wasteland that Catalonia had become. While he struggles to function as a rural priest, his steps are dogged by ghostly figures from the past, including a fascist agent provocateur with whom he is drawn, against his wishes, into lengthy and obsessive dialogues about the war in which only lunacy prevails. And it is these dialogues that make up the bulk of the book, and in the midst of the lengthy philosophical digressions that mar most of these conversations, the experience of reading it became a little tedious for my part.
Winds of the Night presents a dark commentary on the consequences of Franco’s victory from two men who have been made mentally ill by the horrors of the war and subsequent phoney peace. In describing the characters of the two leading men in the novel Sales writes:
Cruells is “a Catalan priest, feeling his way through the long night after the disaster [of the Civil War], through the endless tunnel, a lost neurotic, feeling his way in the dark, while the wind of schizophrenia blows dust in his face. It is the story of a sick mind. A mind made ill because of the immense scandal of National-Catholicism [the pro-Franco Church]; because of the mystery of the iniquity that he cannot understand; because of those interfering bishops who came to Catalonia chosen only for their hatred and who appeared at public events giving the Nazi salute; so many things that we want to forget but can’t. The unfortunate Cruells lived in an era similar to that lived by Goya but which lasted four times longer, four ominous decades instead of one.”.........Lamoneda, despite being on the winning side is also a lost soul in Franco’s Spain. Franco’s victory has turned out not to be a Falangist victory. The Falange has been neutered, converted into the massive bureaucracy known as the Movimiento Nacional. As the regime became ever more stultified and corrupt, Falangist idealists longed to complete their illusory “social revolution”. Lamoneda no more fits into Franco’s Spain than does Cruells.
Although these increasingly digressive and philosophical discourses between the two characters tend to become tedious at times, Winds of the Night is a landmark testimony to the rhetoric of war and its senseless aftermath, and is, nevertheless, a brilliant novel of ideas that will influence a lot of readers in the time to come.
Is it possible to retain your faith and sanity amid the ravages wrought out by war?
A question, rather straightforward, but without any convincing answer. The survivors of the war are the only true witnesses of the spectacle, and they only bear testimony in the tragic aftermath when humanity and civilisation have been reduced to rubble. The author creates just such a protagonist who is, at once, a servant of god and a true witness. Reading this narrative, we get a glimpse of post-war Catalonia through the eyes of a chaplain struggling with his faith in the aftermath of brutal destruction.
This book is the follow-up, published almost thirty years later, to the author's acclaimed masterwork of the Spanish Civil War, and indeed it is a book brimming with extraordinary historical and philosophical resonance. The protagonist here is a Republican chaplain who had survived the war and then completes his theological studies only to lose his faith in a world where it seems all hope has been extinguished. Through his eyes, the author tries to paint a picture of the hopeless and shell-shocked wasteland that Catalonia had become. While he struggles to function as a rural priest, his steps are dogged by ghostly figures from the past, including a fascist agent provocateur with whom he is drawn, against his wishes, into lengthy and obsessive dialogues about the war in which only lunacy prevails. And it is these dialogues that make up the bulk of the book, and in the midst of the lengthy philosophical digressions that mar most of these conversations, the experience of reading it became a little tedious for my part.
Winds of the Night presents a dark commentary on the consequences of Franco’s victory from two men who have been made mentally ill by the horrors of the war and subsequent phoney peace. In describing the characters of the two leading men in the novel Sales writes:
Cruells is “a Catalan priest, feeling his way through the long night after the disaster [of the Civil War], through the endless tunnel, a lost neurotic, feeling his way in the dark, while the wind of schizophrenia blows dust in his face. It is the story of a sick mind. A mind made ill because of the immense scandal of National-Catholicism [the pro-Franco Church]; because of the mystery of the iniquity that he cannot understand; because of those interfering bishops who came to Catalonia chosen only for their hatred and who appeared at public events giving the Nazi salute; so many things that we want to forget but can’t. The unfortunate Cruells lived in an era similar to that lived by Goya but which lasted four times longer, four ominous decades instead of one.”.........Lamoneda, despite being on the winning side is also a lost soul in Franco’s Spain. Franco’s victory has turned out not to be a Falangist victory. The Falange has been neutered, converted into the massive bureaucracy known as the Movimiento Nacional. As the regime became ever more stultified and corrupt, Falangist idealists longed to complete their illusory “social revolution”. Lamoneda no more fits into Franco’s Spain than does Cruells.
Although these increasingly digressive and philosophical discourses between the two characters tend to become tedious at times, Winds of the Night is a landmark testimony to the rhetoric of war and its senseless aftermath, and is, nevertheless, a brilliant novel of ideas that will influence a lot of readers in the time to come.
November 15, 2025
Really had a hard time getting into this book. 100+ pages of a secondary character rambling.
November 20, 2021
Incerta Gloria follow-up. In fact, it was the 4th chapter initially. It contains the thoughts of a single character, Cruells, instead of letters. The characters from the initial novel appear in a certain way, and their stories are closed. The action takes place after the Spanish Civil War until 1969.
A lot of topics are covered from faith and religion to loneliness and friendship.
A lot of topics are covered from faith and religion to loneliness and friendship.
August 19, 2017
Llibre completament dependent de Incerta Glòria. De fet sembla el seu quart capítol. Dona més detalls sobre com evolucionen els seus personatges un cop acabada la Guerra Civil, introduint de ple un personatge que mig surt en el primer llibre.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews