The anatomy of a moment thirty-five minutes in history and imagination

"The best history book at the year"-Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. Times Literary Supplement (UK).

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cercas, Javier, 1962-
Other Authors: McLean, Anne, 1962- (Translator)
Format: Downloads eBook Books eBook
Language:English
Spanish
Published: New York : Bloomsbury, 2011.
Edition:1st U.S. ed.
Subjects:
Online Access:Go to Downloadable eBook Here.
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Description
Summary:"The best history book at the year"-Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. Times Literary Supplement (UK).
"A masterpiece of twenty-first-century European Literature."--Jordi Gracia, El Pais.
In February 1981, Spain, still emerging from Franco's shadow, was in the process of electing a new prime minister. On the day of the vote in Parliament, while the session was being filmed by TV cameras, a band of right-wing soldiers burst in with automatic weapons, ordering everyone down. Only three men defied the order. For thirty-five minutes, as bullets flew and cameras rolled, they stayed in their seats.
Javier Cercas originally set out to write a work of fiction about this pivotal event but determined it had already gained an air of myth, or, through the annual broadcast of video clips, had at least acquire the fictional taint of reality television. Instead, Cercas employs vivid descriptions of that archival footage to frame a true narrative of the attempted coup, which he comes to understand as a last gasp of the bloody civil war four decades earlier.
Traversing the line between history and art, Cercas creates an incisive literary inquest into national myth, personal memory, political spectacle, and reality itself. His account of a watershed modent in Spain's history is a contemporary masterpiece of Spanish literature.
"With this noval, Javier Cercas takes his place in the select group at the forefront of Spanish literature."-Roberto Bolano.
"A masterly parable of political violence, of suffering, but also, and decisively, of the strange locic of compassion and healing ... [Soldiers of Salamis] should become a classic."-George Steiner.
"This book is magnificent ... One of the best I've read in a long time."-Mario Vargas Llosa, El Pais --Book Jacket.
Item Description:Originally published as Anatomía de un instante by Random House Mondadori, Barcelona.
Physical Description:1 online resource (403 p.) : ill.
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN:9781608195930
1608195937
Author Notes:Javier Cercas is the author of Soldiers of Salamis, The Tenant & The Motive and The Speed of Light . He has taught at the University of Illinois and for many years was a lecturer in Spanish literature at the University of Gerona. He lives in Barcelona with his wife and son. Anne McLean is the translator of works by Carmen Martín Gaite, Julio Cortázar, Ignacio Martínez de Pisón and Tomás Eloy Martínez. She has twice won the Independent Prize for Foreign Fiction: for Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas in 2004 (which also won her the Valle Inclán Award), and for The Armies by Evelio Rosero in 2009.