Os libros arden mal

by Manuel Rivas

La pesadilla que vive la ciudad no es una ficción. Sí, es verdad. Están quemando las bibliotecas de los ateneos, del centro de estudios Germinal, del señor Casares... El humo no levanta el vuelo. Es pegajoso. Huele a carne humana.
En esta novela, las vidas de los libros, las personas y el lenguaje se cruzan y entrelazan en un intenso relato de suspense que transcurre desde el siglo xix hasta nuestros días, entre la atrocidad autoritaria y la indomable libertad.
La lavandera que ve películas en el fluir del río, el boxeador anarquista, el balón del Diligent, el cantante de tangos, la cabeza de la mujer negra, la Rosa Taquigráfica, la coccinella septempunctata, el coleccionista compulsivo de Biblias...
Los libros arden mal es un universo poblado de voces insólitas, de memorias que retumban o murmuran de forma inolvidable, verdadera literatura donde todo está en vilo.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Spain, Spanish Literature, Historical, Books About Books, War

741 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2006

About the author

Manuel Rivas Barrós (born 24 October 1957 in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain) is a Galician writer, poet and journalist.

Manuel Rivas Barrós began his writing career at the age of 15. He has written articles and literature essays for Spanish newspapers and television stations like Televisión de Galicia, El Ideal Gallego, La Voz de Galicia, El País, and was the sub-editor of Diario 16 in Galicia. He was a founding member of Greenpeace Spain, and played an important role during the 2002 Prestige oil spill near the Galician coast.

As of 2017, Rivas has published 9 anthologies of poetry, 14 novels and several literature essays. He is considered a revolutionary in contemporary Galician literature. His 1996 book "Que me queres, amor?", a series of sixteen short stories, was adapted by director José Luis Cuerda for his film "A lingua das bolboretas" ("Butterfly's Tongue"). His 1998 novel "O lápis do carpinteiro" ("The Carpenter's Pencil") has been published in nine countries and it is the most widely translated work in the history of Galician literature. It also was adapted to cinema as "O Lápis do Carpinteiro".

Reviews

[Inderjit Sanghera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rivas's story spans over a century of Spanish history, but centres on a single day in Coruña when the fascists burned a large number of books. From the cinders of that day rose the ashes of the novel; Hercules the boxer, the acerbic anarchist Polka, the asinine and dilettante censor Dez, the lives of all of these characters centre around that fateful day where the day embers of republican Spain where engulfed in the inferno of fascism. Rivas's novel isn't so much an grandiose exploration of the wrongs of fascism, but more its essential banality, as well as the small-minded and parochial acts of cruelty and insecurity which define it. So some soldiers decide on a whim to murder a gypsy family because they feel gypsies have gotten off lightly so far, so the soldiers gleefully confine works of genius and works of trash to the flames as they are unable to differentiate between the two outside the fact that they contravene the narrow confines of acceptable art in fascist Spain.

Rivas's novel paradoxically acts as a whirlwind dervish tour of 20th century Spanish history where nothing of any real notes. Instead Rivas explores the gradual disintegration of a generation beneath the oppressive weight of the Spanish government; the novel frequently meanders into tangents, from the search for a apocryphal Bible to the allegorical stories of John Black Eye which confound the censor or the juvenile indiscretions of Korea on the dockside. There is something disorganisation and dizzying about Rivas's style, as he constantly jumps between timelines, characters and narratives and at times this can be discombobulating for the reader, however there is no escaping the verve and originality of Rivas's style. 

[Lahierbaroja · Rating 4 out of 5]

A día de hoy, la novela que más me ha gustado de Rivas es ésta. Totalmente cautivadora.

https://lahierbaroja.wordpress.com/20...

[Jane · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can count the number of books I have started reading and not finished on the fingers of one hand. This book is one of them. I got to page 218 of 545 and realised that I just wasn't enjoying it. Normally when I'm reading a book I hate to put it down and can't wait to pick it up again. Not with this one - I hated picking it up.

I think at times the book suffers from poor translation. Although I don't speak Galician, I do speak Spanish and Portuguese and I could often read the Galician wording below the English translation. As a translator, I do understand that this can give a text an 'exotic' or 'foreignised' flavour but for me it didn't work in this book.

The thing I found most frustrating was not being able to keep track of which character the narrative was referring to. A chapter would start with one male character then a few pages later I would realise that the pronoun 'he' was now referring to a different male character and I would have to go back to work out who.

This is a difficult book to read, with many unusual metaphors. I liked that they and one or two of them were very effective but very often they didn't work for me.

[Karellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I struggled with this book - because of the length and sheer beauty of the writing. I kept re-reading passages. I feel in love with the characters - Olinda, Polka, Hercules,Gabriel, and O. And the rest, such a melange of supporting characters that at times I found it hard going. But the sheer beauty of the prose - as a poet i found it quite intoxicating. I was sad when it ended, the author had transported me into another world that felt so real. Just like my first experience of Bolano, in fact. I'd like to read something else by Rivas - but it'd have to be shorter.

[Kevin Tole · Rating 4 out of 5]

”Books as defendants under arrest, against the wall. With their backs to the people. In a line, squeezed tight, unable to move, in mute silence. They were the lucky ones. Days, months, years will go by, and the arrested books will gradually disappear. Book by book, the dismantling of the library, what’s not burnt in the Palace of Justice. And the same thing will happen to the man’s entire credentials. Everything will be the object of pillaging.” p.47

I am almost tempted to call this a great book, but I have some not inconsiderable reservations. It is certainly Manuel Garcia Rivas’ magnum opus so far. If, however, you can’t handle the 500+ pages here, go and start your introduction to Rivas with ‘The Carpenter's Pencil’ which is a much shorter.

This book is at another level to ’The Carpenter’s Pencil’. Vast in time and space. Innumerable characters. Poetic, even Joycean in its scope. Flash backs and Flash forwards and flashbacks within flashbacks. This is first and foremost about the wanton act of burning books, an act so sacrilegious that it can only come from two sources; to keep warm in the absence of anything else to burn as a source of heat, or as an act of elimination, to destroy something that is disapproved of by some other authority, an act of censorship, a nullification through destruction. Rivas gives us an epic centred on the Spanish Civil War in Galicia, in particular around the burning of books in Coruña’s parks by the Falange and Nationalists. Galicia is a special region in Spain with ties going back to the Celts driven to the western extremes by the Romans. As a region therefore it has close ties with Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, Wales and Western Scotland. All these areas to a lesser or greater extent have the remnants or a fully active native tongue which harks back to those Celtic roots and traditions.

Like Ulysses, you have to read this book with an open mind. This is stream of un-consciousness writing. To try to hold onto narrative or character progress and development will cause the reader untold misfortune and confusion. But this prose is full of value, common-folk knowledge and truths like epigrams. Do not try to hold onto the characters. There are so many, each filled in gradually with each episode but who might not be encountered again for some hundred pages. Minor characters may give light into the major characters. Each character, each incident has a story to tell which is pertinent, sometimes even foundational to the understanding of the novel as a whole. Rivas writes as if everything is part of a whole that is bigger than the individuals that make up the episodes. Inanimate objects can become animate, sentient beings described fully and living. There is a sense that All pervades Everything which can become a synaesthesia such that a drawn line has a sound which has a colour and a smell. Letters become nature; books, whole menageries and environments.

The core section which holds everything together is the book burnings just a month after the coup which saw Nationalist forces take control on July 17th 1936. Galicia was overrun by the Nationalists. The book burnings mark the Nationalists first month of Year 1. Some things would have no future as well as no past. Republicans were imprisoned for daring to seek a federal Spain. For the Nationalists it was like awaking into a Crusade or as Inquisitionists seeking retribution against the forces of the left and anything that might be seen to undermine the status quo of upper- land-owning class and monarchical rule which then effectively became dictatorship. Book burning is about the elimination of the power of words; how words resonate, of the love of words and through both these, a love of learning. Burning books was a Year Zero to learning accumulated from the past. It was a statement of the elimination of the a priori culture of learning which accelerates to killing and imprisonment, torture and maiming and exile.

”Words are the most visible footprints.”

The emerging picture after the coup is one of a life of increasing oppression and danger with the occasional flash of human tolerance – a life of sardonic normality overlaying a deeper sense of pain and hurt as the tools of the totalitarians are applied. It is a recognition of the language of silence, how a pious aesthete Catholic student could transform to a commander capable of burning books, news of which, or rather the absence of news seemed to suggest that the event never occurred. It is the anxiety of being called to task over anything one might innocently do, imposed by a petty authority full of overbearing incompetence.

By a third of the way through you realise that all the characters are interconnected by strands into a community where everyone knows everyone else through small degrees of separation. Even the Nationalists are part of this community, and that all their stories are strands in the life in Coruna and the history of life under Nationalism. The sense of anxiety even in the lightest moments of the daily lives of the characters is always there, and Rivas expertly brings this out. It is also a homage to the history and culture of Galicia, of the land, it’s people and it’s poetry. I was struck by the beauty and simplicity of the prose and poetry which is a credit to the translator, Jonathon Dunne.

Over everything hangs the looming threat against the citizenry of the terror imposed under Totalitarianism. This is the same in any Totalitarian regime - Chile under Pinochet, Ethiopia under Mengistu, Stalin, the Gestapo and many post-colonial African states. Terror starts with book burning but proceeds through arrest, interrogation and beatings, torture to assassination. Life is proscribed. A body turning up with a single gunshot to the head was described by the state coroner as ‘death by meningeal bleeding’. That anxiety and the memories were passed on from the elders to the next generation. It is easy to forget that the reign of the Caudillo Franco lasted from 1939 till his death in 1975 with all the apparatus of State repression throughout that period. The history of the Spanish Civil War is one of massacre after massacre. Part of Rivas’ aim in the book is to reinvigorate the memories which were largely swept under the carpet on Franco’s death.

And my reservations? This book could have done with a good editor with the nerve to cut 100 pages. Its over 560 pages long. By page 400 its form has started to become a little tedious. Incidents are piled on incidents, names on names and characters from 300 pages back are resurrected possibly with a different name. Flashbacks and flashforwards become hardly discernible. These extra incidents generally add little to what has already been stated. The narrative does move on and there are a few new themes (not that we needed another theme) explored. These include the championing of Barry Goldwater in the States by European Neo-Fascists; the centring around Gabriel, the judge’s son who is struck with stammering, being tongue-tied and compulsive writing. A certain ‘Dada-ist’ element creeps into the writing in that we are never sure exactly who is being talked about / talking or the period we are in. There are still great sections of writing but they are over-clouded by the confusion of what is going on.

”She’d leave the hotel with the exciting and dangerous sensation of knowing too much.” p.433

The judge’s wife leaves him / disappears. Is she an undercover agent for the Republican cause? The allusions to touch-typing – writing without looking at the keys as a metaphor; the development of a detective story in a 'what-is-myth-and-what-is-fact' sense, the contents found in a whale’s stomach as allusion to the State. Generally it piles on the sense of ineptitude and corruption of Nationalism invoking a climate of fear and stasis.

I managed to p 484 (out of 545). Nothing seemed to be added for 80 pages other than new themes that that failed to take the essence of the book any further forward, but still with flashes of great writing. It is a powerful book containing both metaphorical and historical sense of what it was like to live under Nationalism in Franco's Spain. This is why I believe that this book needed a good editor and perhaps a better translator. It is still worth powering into to see what current writing in Spain is producing, to see Galicia's own national literature…. But don’t be surprised if you give up before the end. And just maybe it will, as it did me, give you a taste and desire to visit Galicia and A Coruña. Can literature transcend history?

He only had a photographic memory of the Pavillion with its sensual facade. Shame it burnt. It was one of the temples of that architecture, a peculiar form of Atlantic art nouveau which spread from the Fishmarket to Recheo Gardens, reclaimed land, and which seemed to have been conceived as a permanent flirt, a joyful plan in which both people and materials took part, in the wood's voluptuousness, the metal's erotic rebirth, the iron's sudden vegetal will, the dominant colour of glass everywhere, a second nature of mirrors, spaces to see and be seen, the glass's second life, at night, somnambulant, electric.... After the war, architectural horror. The violation of modernist carnality. The intimidation of property. The corrosion of the city's character. The dictatorship's main feature was ugliness. An unpublishable conclusion. Everything had got uglier. He himself had. So had his handwriting. p.340

[Geoffrey Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

El espíritu de libertad creativa de la II República, encarnada especialmente en una pandilla de jóvenes deportistas y literatos de A Coruña, sobrevive la insurreción militar, las masacres, y la pretendida extirpación de su memoria por el régimen franquista, para la enorme frustración de los represores obsesionados con ese proyecto. Es una gran novela, no sólo por su grueso (610 folios) sino por su complejidad y sus logros en presentar las maneras de pensar (y de amar y odiar, temer y esperar) de gente tan diversa como Polca, el jardinero-enterrador-gaitero; Ricardo Samos, el católico literato que quema libros y después llega a ser juez en el franquismo; Chelo Vidal, la bella mujer del juez y pintora reconocida, que resulta tener otra vida oculta, arriesgada y noble; Dez, el censor franquista gay que se fantasea poeta; Curtis, apodado "Hércules hijo de puta", grandísimo y fortísimo aspirante a electricista que se convierte en fotógrafo ambulante -- y los de las próximas generaciones, especialmente Gabriel, hijo de Ricardo Samos y Chelo Vidal, y Ó, hija de Polca. Y decenas de personajes más.

La quema de libros sacados de bibliotecas privadas y públicas en A Coruña un mes después de la insurrección falangista, en agosto de 1936, es la imagen central y recurrente. La memoria de esos libros, y la supervivencia de algunos con sus cantos quemados, y la búsqueda desesperada de uno en particular por el juez Samos, son la imagen central.

Muchas veces es difícil saber hasta bien entrado en un capítulo cuál de estos personajes está hablando o siendo observado, y si estamos en julio o agosto de 1936, o en 1963, o algún año posterior -- que me obligaba a releer las primeras oraciones una vez que me había ubicado. Y algunas de las historias no están resueltas. Por ejemplo, nunca entendí exactamente quién era o por qué importa un joven (contemporáneo de Gabriel Samos) a que llaman "Zonzo", y varios otros misterios en ese mundo donde todos manejaban el secretismo siguen misteriosos o ambiguos al final. Pero vale la pena hacer el esfuerzo, porque te hace sentir (sin tener que sufrirlo en carne propia) ese terrible régimen de miedo que era el franquismo. 20080927

[Rob · Rating 2 out of 5]

A panic purchase and evidence perhaps that W.H. Smith's at Heathrow Airport might want to consider a more considered attitude toward supply chain management, this is far from a bad book but, at the risk of confirming people's opinion of me as a bit of a thicko, a really difficult one to get into.

Each sentence is lovingly crafted - in the translation at least, although I have no reason to believe that the original Galician is any less accomplished - but therein lies the problem - if the author wanted to write a book of poetry, he should have written a book of poetry. A beautiful use of metaphor and imagery punctuates every pages but the text is comprised of a series of allusions and impressions, with narrative clinging on all too desperately - I like a difficult book but this was ridiculous.

I blame Twitter for the diminishing of my attention span.

[Sandra Cronistera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quizás porque, como señala Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola, "los libros han ganado más batallas que las guerras", porque, parafraseando a Ricardo León, los libros hacen pensar y el pensamiento nos hace libres o porque "las guerras empiezan por las palabras", como afirma el escritor de la obra que reseño hoy, la quema de libros ha sido un acto recurrente a lo largo de la Historia. Tal vez por esto mismo, Manuel Rivas trueca Los libros arden mal en un homenaje a todos los libros quemados, destruidos, convirtiendo la quema de libros que se realizó en la Dársena y la plaza de María Pita de A Coruña el 19 de agosto de 1936 (tras el Golpe de Estado contra el Gobierno de la Segunda República y el mismo día que asesinaron a Federico García Lorca) en el eje central de la novela.

Opinión completa en http://estandocallada.blogspot.com.es...

[Alberto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Máis por motivos extraliterarios que polos libros que lle tiña lido (uns millores e outros peores) non podo dicir que fose un admirador incondicional de Rivas, pero réndome á evidencia: un novelón cunha prosa belísima e narrando unha historia longa, con personaxes perfetamente debuxados (se acaso póñolle un pequeno reparo ó seu maniqueísmo: tan bos os bos, tan irremediablemente maus os maus) e unha trama moi traballada que -lamentablemente, por outra parte- segue de actualidade hoxe.
Un punto adicional para min é a ambientación nunha Coruña que xa só existe residualmente pero é tanto máis recoñecible canto máis perto da miña infancia van as miñas lembranzas. Se Pontevedra ten a 'Saga-fuga' e Ourense 'A Esmorga', para min a gran novela coruñesa é esta 'Os libros arden mal'.

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Manuel Rivas. This book is a bit of a puzzle, a poem and an obfuscated history. The story shifts characters so frequently (some of which are recurring and others just drop out-which may be toward the point) it is hard to know where to focus attention and I can see that it could be challenging if you are not already interested in the author or subject of the Spanish civil war. There is some patience required and a rough knowledge of the subject helps greatly. It is a history that is quiet, not talked about or even much written about but one that is still alive. Also his style of writing is a little abstract but I find he manages to say things in a very new and pertinent way. What a great author to discover. One of my favorites.

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most likely Books Burn Badly merits a higher rating. At times I found it riveting, but the majority of the effort was a flailing though endless noodles of dialogue and description which simmered without the benefit of elucidation.

[Raquel Sertaje · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maravilloso dominio del lenguaje.
Manuel es el rey de la palabra: La mima, la rescata del olvido, la despierta del letargo y la eleva a un nivel de consciencia mundano.

No tenemos nada igual en España.

[Ian Gillibrand · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a big disappointment to me as the subject matter around the Spanish Civil War I find fascinating. Last year I read the phenomenal "Homeland" by Fernando Arumburu and was hoping this would be similarly rewarding.

The scene upon which the book is titled occurs at the beginning of the book and is quite well done in portraying the barbaric nihilism of the action in a Galacian harbour town at the start of the Civil War. The language used in the book is poetic in form throughout and there are some delightful passages but for me the problem lies in the structure.

Individuals present at or connected with the book burning are followed up as their lives progress (or come to an abrupt, sometimes violent end) in the years that follow. This is fine as a concept but the "updates" are fragmentary, often the reader is left unclear as to whom the update refers to, and the updates themselves can be as short as a couple of paragraphs before Rivas takes us somewhere else.

I contrasted this very unfavorably with Nadas' " Book of Memories" which I finished recently where Nadas does a similar thing, jumping backwards and forwards in time and between characters but the updates are substantial and meaningful so the reader can both identify, and identify with the subjects being described.

I see the book divides opinion and I now know why.

[Libros Raquel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rivas escribe muy bien, pero no, no llegué a conectar con el libro.

Una lástima. Una novela experimental que he acabado abandonando porqué no podía continuar.

Seguiré con el autor, pero con otros títulos.

[Editorial Alfaguara]

He aqu� la historia dram�tica de la cultura. La pesadilla que vive la ciudad no es una ficci�n. S�, es verdad. Est�n quemando las bibliotecas de los ateneos, del centro de estudios Germinal, del se�or Casares... El humo no levanta el vuelo. Es pegajoso. Huele a carne humana. En esta novela, las vidas de los libros, las personas y el lenguaje se cruzan y entrelazan en un intenso relato de suspense que transcurre desde el siglo XIX hasta nuestros d�as, entre la atrocidad autoritaria y la indomable libertad. La lavandera que ve pel�culas en el fluir del r�o, el boxeador anarquista, el bal�n del Diligent, el cantante de tangos, la cabeza de la mujer negra, la Rosa Taquigr�fica, la coccinella septempunctata, el coleccionista compulsivo de Biblias... Los libros arden mal es un universo poblado de voces ins�litas, de memorias que retumban o murmuran de forma inolvidable, verdadera literatura donde todo est� en vilo.

[Roger Boyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Translated from Galician, an account of teenage life during the Spanish War. Maybe it was the quality of the xlation (how many people speak Galician), but I gave up after 100pp, and I very rarely give up.

[Gonzalo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cando este libro foi publicado orixinalmente chegou á miña casa unha copia en castelán que non quixen ler, coa idea de acabar mercandoo en galego. Xa choveu dende entón, é seica unha das razóns pola que tardei unha barbaridade en rematar este libro é porque a Memoria Histórica xa non está tan en voga ao meu parecer como daquela, canto menos na miña cabeza. Agora ben, dicir que o libro de Rivas xa non está de moda sería unha simplificación terribel. Precisamente porque un xa non vai con gomas do pelo no brazo a xeito de tricolor, este libro axuda a lembrar que “aquí non houbo guerra […] o que chaman guerra foi unha caza ….” Fronte ao “tan malos son uns extremos coma outros” que semella callado en boa parte, cómpre lembrar detalliños como o querer borrar da historia—literalmente—a xente como Casares Quiroga. Que non será o peor que se lle fixo a ninguén. Igual que a quema de libros sobre a que se vertebra o libro non será o peor que lle pasou a A Coruña en 40 anos de ditadura, pero é indicativo de algo.
Nisto da Memoria, Rivas merece un dez. E non (só) polos currantes de día, intelectuáis—boxeadores ou naturistas—de noite daquel derradeiro verán de Hespaña, senón (tamén) polo ben caracterizados que están os vencedores. Lonxe de ser unha panda de supervilans de comic, ou os asasinos que foron—para iso esta “Os Nomes do Terror”—Rivas introducenos a unha serie de persoaxes non libres de ideoloxia e certamente beneficiados polo Movimiento que de todos os xeitos podemos comprender, a pesares de estar nas antípodas deles. E coma case sempre, o mellor do autor é o seu humor. Frases que semella que lle escoitou a alguén nun bar, pero que probabelmente sexan completamente da súa autoría.
O problema deste libro non son as persoaxes, nin o trasfondo historico, nin a tradución—da que moitos angloparlantes se queixan, non sei se con razón ou sen ela— e simplemente que non ten trama—ou eu non lla din atopado. Non son dos que precisa dun asasinato ou unha misión encargada por un feiticeiro para seguir lendo, pero non teño claro porque non o deixei para ir na procura de algo máis entretido. Diría que cada capítulo está ben, ao seu xeito, pero ás veces un ten a impresión de estar a ler unha viñeta sobre A Coruña da (pre/post)Guerra, sen moita relación co lido ata entón, ou co que imos ler a continuación.
Gustariame animar a xente que o deixou a medias a que lle dera unha segunda oportunidade, pero se lichedes 100 páxinas e non vos convenceu, penso que facedes ben en ir buscar outro libro (de Rivas) que ler.

[Mark Reece · Rating 3 out of 5]

Books Burn Badly spans twentieth century Spain, with the narrative of much of the start of the book based during the Spanish civil war, where the nationalists/fascists carried out ritual book burning. The majority of the rest of the novel is set during the time of the Franco dictatorship, with a few paragraphs at the end set in the post Franco era. There are a lot of characters, including some that recur. The boxer Hercules spans many eras, a man with democratic sympathies who was only allowed to fight once. Later on, much of the narrative focuses on Samos, a judge, and Ren, a censor, who form part of the power elite of the dictatorship.

The language was often beautiful and evocative, with many images that stick in the memory, such as the books that don't burn properly, including a treatise on electrical engineering, which has periodic significance thereafter. The sections that focus on specific characters were the ones that worked best in my view, particularly those around Samos, detailing his obsessions with trashy novels, and his worries that his son won't be accepted because of his stutter.

However, I found that the overall structure of the book was too diffuse. There were too many characters for them all to be easily recognizable, and in some chapters, it was not clear who was speaking. This also made some of the themes hard to follow; some of the events seemed anecdotes on first reading, although if copious notes had been taken, perhaps I would have taken a different view.

There is a grandness about the book, both in the scale of the story and the evocative of the language that mean I would recommend it (some pre-knowledge of Spanish history would help comprehension). It would likely benefit from re-reading, although that it not an exercise that everyone will undertake.

[Mariana Romo-Carmona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro fabuloso que no podré terminar de leer porque la vida sigue... pero lo recomiendo a los que tienen el tiempo y nunca han leído nada de Galicia. Es la mejor introducción a un imaginario único, que se sitúa en la Guerra Civil con la quema de libros (por los facistas) en La Coruña, pero que en realidad es ancestral y se lee en ecos de voces que resuenan en la historia. Voces de mujeres, la lavandera, la bruja, el niño y, de fondo, siempre el río, el mar, la relación interrumpida del pueblo con su tierra. Me parece una dedicatoria de amor profundo, con influencia marquesiana sin duda en el enfoque y en el lenguaje mágico de la memoria, pero como tal, una novela parte de la literatura global de este siglo.

[Eleanor Greenwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

I suspect a great many of the issues that I had with this book, which I really, really struggled to read, were simply due to the translation, which was....not good, really. You get the sense that it was translated word for word, rather than in the spirit of each sentence, and so has become quite laborious and torturous. It's a shame, but having to work so hard to understand what was going on rather spoiled everything else.

[Angela Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Multiple stories converging into a historic event where a pyre of printed matter was torched by soldiers in Spain on 19th August 1936. Animal magnetism, acetylsalicylic acid, women carrying things (sewing machines, washing or fish) on their heads, a judge who's son stammers, a boxer - with a tooth in his glove - a lighthouse, a photographer and a dancer along with many other interesting characters and characteristics formulate this complex tale.

[Alex MR · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fue la unica novela de Manuel Rivas que he leido, , la lei hace tiempo en un principio se hace dificil por la cantidad de cosas y personajes que van apareciendo pero poco a poco te vas haciendo a ella , en su dia cuando la lei recuerdo que me gustaba pero para leer poco a poco, recuedo que me costaba a veces otras la leia sin problema, es buena novela pero cuesta un poco de leer por eso le doy un tres

[Ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ojalá pudiera darle más puntuación, porque el tema es muy interesante y hay un par de momentos muy emotivos y muy interesantes. Sin embargo, dichos momentos estan en su mayoría en el primer 25% del libro, y el resto se me hizo innecesariamente denso, largo y aburrido (lo siento). Lo acabé por cabezonería y fuerza de voluntad pura, porque hace años lo intenté y no pude con él.

[Aurelio García · Rating 3 out of 5]

He disfrutado cuando estaba leyendo la novela. Pero es costosa de leer, porque aparecen distintos personajes, sin un orden, así como el fondo, que no es agradable. Aunque desees ponerte a leerla, no puedes estar toda la tarde porque va aumentando su densidad. Sus alegorías dan aire fresco a la novela, pero no el suficiente.

[Giulio Marinelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un'ampia schiera di personaggi dà la possibilità all'autore di raccontare il periodo della dittatura franchista. Il romanzo prende spunto dall'evento accaduto nella darsena di A coruna in cui i franchisti daranno fuoco a tutti i libri del paese. Interessante seppur carico di personaggi è scorrevole utilissima la lista dei personaggi presentie nell edizione che ho letto..

[Head in Hands · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an unusual and uneven book but I couldn't get enough. The Spanish Civil War's impact on individuals in Coruna is told through short episodes, untidy narratives and it is the portraits of individuals which grip. Th

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was very challenging for me, but rewarding. I found an online dissertation by Ruth Deblaere very helpful.

[Felipe Corcobado Oñate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Describe sucesos que ocurrieron en Galicia durante finales del siglo XIX y el tiempo de la guerra civil. Literatura y más literatura, personajes inusuales, sucesos verdaderos alrededor del ideario fascista y la quema sistemática de libros.

[Magdelanye · Rating 5 out of 5]

The future is surely uncertain: who can say what will happen? But the past is also uncertain: who can say what happened? frontspiece

Riveting, hard to read, horrifying in its immediacy. An amazing acheivement

The darkness is also in pieces. Translucent, empty. p59

[Cathy Geagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review to follow