Through the hoop; translated from the French by Peter Wiles

by Michel del Castillo

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1963

About the author

Michel Janicot del Castillo was a French writer.

Reviews

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I don’t read a ton of fiction but this novel convinced me that I should. Just a classic novel in all the right ways. A really lively encapsulation of malaise and hysteria in Francoist Spain. And it is written in such a cinematic fashion.

Tourists on their way through Huesca invariably visit the top of the Cathedral bell tower. It affords a view of the huge, parched, rocky Aragonese plain. This has neither the majesty of the Castilian nor the imperturbability of the Andalusian. It is neither red nor golden, but grey. Its appeal lies in its pathos. Bare, unkempt, unembellished, it opens its arms. On summer evenings it can be heard wailing: a raucous, heartrending, heaven-directed wail. Not a tree to be seen. Nothing to arrest the eye. Nothing to gratify the mind. Just earth and sky. A dry, cracked earth that has been dying of thirst for thousands of years; a cloudless, haughty sky, sharp and uncompromising as the blade of a sword, offering no grounds for hopes or dreams. Engrained in the soil of Aragon is the tragedy of its condition.