Javier Cercas

Nueva edici n de Soldados de Salamina, novela imprescindible del siglo XXI, revisada a fondo por el autor y rematada por un esclarecedor ep logo escrito por l mismo. A finales de enero de 1939, apenas dos meses antes del final de la guerra civil, un grupo de prisioneros franquistas es fusilado cerca la frontera francesa por soldados republicanos que huyen hacia el exilio. Entre esos prisioneros se halla Rafael S nchez Mazas, fundador e ide logo de la Falange, poeta y futuro ministro de Franco, quien consigue milagrosamente escapar y ocultarse en el bosque mientras los republicanos lo persiguen; hasta que un soldado lo descubre, lo enca ona y, mir ndolo a los ojos, le perdona la vida. Sesenta a os m s tarde, un novelista fracasado descubre por azar este enterrado episodio b lico y, fascinado por l, emprende una investigaci n para aclarar sus circunstancias y desentra ar su significado. Qui n era de verdad Rafael S nchez Mazas? Cu l fue su verdadera peripecia de guerra? Qui n fue el soldado que le dej escapar? Y por qu lo hizo? Qu secreto escond a su mirada? Novela revolucionaria y deslumbrante, Soldados de Salamina cosech un extraordinario xito de cr tica y p blico y catapult la carrera de uno de los novelistas m s prestigiosos de la actual narrativa espa ola. Desde entonces no ha dejado de leerse en todo el mundo con creciente admiraci n y catorce a os m s tarde sigue siendo, como afirm Mario Vargas Llosa, una de las grandes novelas de nuestro tiempo . ENGLISH DESCRIPTION In the final moments of the Spanish Civil War, a writer and founding member of Franco's Fascist Party is about to be shot, and yet miraculously escapes into the forest. When his hiding place is discovered, he faces death for the second time that day-but is spared, this time by a lone soldier. The POW becomes a national hero and a member of Franco's first government, while the soldier is forgotten. Sixty years later, Cercas's novel peels back the layers of truth and propaganda in order to discover who the real hero was. Elegantly constructed and told with self-deprecating, melancholy humor, Soldiers of Salamis is a wholly original work of literature by a modern master.

He aqui una fascinante novela sin ficcion saturada de ficcion; la ficcion no la pone el autor: la pone Enric Marco. Quien es Enric Marco? Un nonagenario barcelones que se hizo pasar por superviviente de los campos nazis y que fue desenmascarado en mayo de 2005, despues de presidir durante tres anos la asociacion espanola de los supervivientes, pronunciar centenares de conferencias, conceder decenas de entrevistas, recibir importantes distinciones y conmover en algun caso hasta las lagrimas a los parlamentarios espanoles reunidos para rendir homenaje por vez primera a los republicanos deportados por el III Reich. El caso dio la vuelta al mundo y convirtio a Marco en el gran impostor y el gran maldito. Ahora, casi una decada mas tarde, Javier Cercas asedia, en este thriller hipnotico que es tambien un banquete con muchos platos -narracion, cronica, ensayo, biografia y autobiografia-, el enigma del personaje, su verdad y sus falsedades y, a traves de esa indagacion que recorre casi un siglo de historia de Espana, bucea con una pasion de kamikaze y una honestidad desgarradora en lo mas profundo de nosotros mismos: en nuestra infinita capacidad de autoengano, en nuestro conformismo y nuestras mentiras, en nuestra sed insaciable de afecto, en nuestras necesidades contrapuestas de ficcion y de realidad, en las zonas mas dolorosas de nuestro pasado reciente. El resultado es un libro que no habla de Enric Marco sino de usted, lector; tambien el libro mas insumiso y radical de Javier Cercas: un libro asombroso que, con una audacia inedita, ensancha los limites del genero novelesco y explora las ultimas fronteras de nuestra humanidad. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION This is a fascinating, non-fiction novel, saturated with fiction; the fiction isn t created by the author, but by Enric Marco. Who is Enric Marco? A 90-year-old man from Barcelona who posed as a Nazi concentration camp survivor and who was exposed in May of 2005 after presiding for three years over the Spanish association for survivors, speaking at hundreds of conferences, granting dozens of interviews, receiving important honors, and even moving Spanish congressmen to tears for the first gathering to pay homage to the Republicans deported by the Third Reich. The case threw the world for a loop and labeled Marco as a great imposter. Now, nearly a decade later, Javier Cercas beseiges the enigma that is the man, his truths and lies, and, through the investigation that traverses nearly a century of Spanish history, delves with a kamikaze s passion and heartbreaking honesty into the deepest part of ourselves: into our infinite ability to self-deceive, our need for conformity and our lies, our insatiable thirst for affection, our opposing needs for fiction and reality, and into the most painful zones of our recent past."

sta es la historia de una amistad que empieza en 1987, cuando el narrador, un joven aspirante a novelista, viaja a una universidad del Medio Oeste estadounidense y conoce a Rodney Falk, su compa ero de despacho, un ex combatiente de Vietnam hura o e inabordable, ferozmente l cido y corro do en secreto por su pasado. Pero sta es tambi n la historia de una experiencia radical en el abismo indescifrable del mal y la culpa, que el propio narrador s lo lograr entender y asumir a os m s tarde, como en una fulguraci n, cuando conozca el xito y lo que ste tiene de corrupci n insidiosa. Para entonces la figura imprecisa de Rodney y su historia devastadora se le acabar n imponiendo con la fuerza de lo necesario, como un emblema de su propia historia, y acaso de la condici n humana. Con una escritura de enga osa transparencia y una trama que no da tregua al lector, La velocidad de la luz indaga en nuestra ilimitada capacidad de hacer da o, en la infinita estupidez de la guerra y en la infinita estupidez del xito, pero sobre todo en el poder definitivo de la literatura para enfrentarse a la realidad y exorcizar sus demonios. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION The story of a young novelist who, over time, must conquer his demons. This is the story of a friendship that starts in 1987, when the narrator, a young aspiring novelist, travels to a university in the Midwest and meets his roommate, Rodney Falk, a shy, unapproachable Vietnam veteran, ferociously clearheaded and secretly haunted by his past. But this is also the story of a radical experience in the indecipherable abyss of evil and guilt, that the narrator himself will only manage to understand and accept years later, as if in a flash, as he experiences success and its insidious corruption. With deceivingly transparent writing and a plot that doesn't give the reader a break, The Speed of Light delves into our unlimited capacity to do harm, into the infinite stupidity of war and success, but above all into the definitive power of literature for facing reality and exorcising our demons.

_______________'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 Moment tells the story of three teenage outsiders in post-Franco SpainIn the late 1970s, as Spain was adrift between the death of Franco and the rebirth of democracy, people were moving from the poor south to the cities of the north in search of a better life. But the work, when there was any, was poorly paid and the housing squalid. Out of this world of limited opportunities a generation of delinquents arose whose prospects were stifled and whose rebellion would be brief and violent… One summer’s day in Gerona a bespectacled, sixteen-year-old Ignacio Cañas, known to his few friends as Gafitas, is working in an amusement arcade, when a charismatic teenager walks in with the most beautiful girl Cañas has ever seen. Zarco and Tere take over his pinball machine and his life. Thirty years on and now a successful criminal defence lawyer, Cañas has tried to put that long, hot summer of drugs, yearning and delinquency behind him. But when Tere appears in his office and asks him to represent El Zarco, who has been in prison all this time, what else can Gafitas do but accept? A powerful novel of love and hate, of loyalty and betrayal, of true integrity and the prison celebrity can become, Outlaws confirms Javier Cercas as one of the most thrilling novelists writing anywhere in the world today._______________'Cercas adroitly balances the earlier criminal thrills with the later moral and emotional complexities' - New Statesman'A moving meditation on youth, love, betrayal and the media, as well as an uncompromising political novel. Cercas has yet again expanded our idea of what fiction can do' - Juan Gabriel Vasquez, author of The Secret History of Costaguana

He aqui una furiosa historia de amor y desamor, de imposturas y violencia, de lealtades y traiciones, de enigmas sin resolver y venganzas inesperadas. En el verano de 1978, cuando Espana no ha salido aun del franquismo y no termina de entrar en la democracia y las fronteras sociales y morales parecen mas porosas que nunca, un adolescente llamado Ignacio Canas conoce por casualidad al Zarco y a Tere, dos delincuentes de su edad, y ese encuentro cambiara para siempre su vida. Treinta anos mas tarde, un escritor recibe el encargo de escribir un libro sobre el Zarco, convertido para entonces en un mito de la delincuencia juvenil de la Transicion, pero lo que el escritor acaba encontrando no es la verdad concreta del Zarco, sino una verdad imprevista y universal, que nos atane a todos. Asi, a traves de un relato que no concede un instante de tregua, escondiendo su extraordinaria complejidad bajo una superficie transparente, la novela se convierte en una apasionada pesquisa sobre los limites de nuestra libertad, sobre las motivaciones inescrutables de nuestros actos y sobre la naturaleza inasible de la verdad. Tambien confirma a Javier Cercas como una de las figuras indispensables de la narrativa europea contemporanea. La critica ha dicho: -Una obra maestra de la narrativa.-Alberto Manguel, La Repubblica -Decir que esta novela va de delincuentes juveniles es como decir que Guerra y paz va de Rusia. Se bebe como agua, pero la digestion es lenta.-Enric Gonzalez, Jot Down -Una novela nitida y compleja, trepidante y melancolica.-Jose Carlos Mainer, El Pais -Una novela excelente.-JM Pozuelo Yvancos, ABC "

_______________‘Richly imagined, suspenseful and surprisingly poignant ... a reminder of how Spanish history might have taken a dramatically different turn' - Financial Times‘Persuasive, brilliant and absorbing' - Economist'Cercas is a master storyteller' - Independent_______________A suspenseful, dramatic novel by the author of Soldiers of Salamis, translated from the Spanish by Anne McLeanIn 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 successfully in his Spanish Civil War novel, Soldiers of Salamis. This is the only coup ever to have been caught on film as it was happening, which, as Cercas says, 'guaranteed both its reality and its unreality'. Every February a few seconds of the video are shown again and Spaniards congratulate themselves for standing up for democracy, but Cercas says that things were very quiet that afternoon and evening while all over Spain people stayed inside waiting for the coup to be defeated ... or to triumph. _______________‘A brilliant reconfiguring of a key event in contemporary European history. Audacious and wholly fascinating' - William Boyd‘An almost Shakespearean account of soldiers, politicians, mixed motives and the lust for power' - Anne Chisholm, Sunday Telegraph'A mesmerising achievement' - Literary Review

_______________ ‘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?

"The Tenant" and "The Motive" are two darkly humorous novels 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, Alvaro, 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 novels are enjoyable masterpieces that linger long in the memory.

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?