The Billsticker

by Michel del Castillo

1st edition Ace UK H513 1961 paperback, vg++, Spanish Civil War In stock shipped from our UK warehouse

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1959

About the author

Michel Janicot del Castillo was a French writer.

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann]

- review still being written -


This is a first rate novel which I have read in an English translation by Humphrey Hare published under the title 'The Bill Sticker' in 1959 by Rupert Hart Davis in the UK and I have posted my review against that listing on GR. Mr. Hare's translation was published in the USA under the title 'The Disinherited' in 1960 - that title is also listed on GR and like 'The Bill Sticker' makes no reference to the original French novel 'Le Colleur D'Affinches' which both of these titles should be listed under as alternate editions.

If anyone has the time or energy to try and make GR Librarians understand his I wish you good luck.

My review:

From the jacket flap of the 1959 UK edition of The Billsticker (an almost exact translation of Le Colleur D'Affinches):

"Though Michel del Castillo was only three years old in 1936, he has chosen Madrid during the Civil War as the setting for his third novel, but Paris in 1792, Petrograd in 1917, or Cuba in 1959 might have served as well, for his theme is the dilemma of men of goodwill when confronted with the reality and the ruthless barbarity of revolution and civil war.

"Utterly 'uncommitted' himself, he examines the reactions of several people from various ranks of society, when fighting breaks out, and the Communists seize power in Madrid and carry out mass-executions, while Franco's troops advance on the capital. Here are the aristocratic model landlord, who shelters refugees from the Fascist bombing and is killed by the advancing Moors; his son who joins the Communist party out of idealism, refuses to take part in the slaughter, resigns and is shott because of his origins; the Asturian miner, a life-long Party member who is killed in defense of Madrid as an anarchist militiaman because he cannot face the logical outcome of the policies he has supported; the Party boss, who is implicitly convinced that the cause of the proletariat can be served only by liquidating every deviationist; and the inhabitant of the 'zone' -that wasteland of outcasts' hovels on the perimeter of Madrid-who, though he is one of the underprivileged for whom the Revolution is being fought, becomes a prey to forces he does not understand, and finds himself a member of the firing squad that executes his best friend."