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Loading... Veinte Anos y Un Dia (edition 2004)by Jorge Semprún
Work InformationVeinte años y un día by Jorge Semprún
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This is the first novel that Jorge Semprun writes directly in Spanish, one in which both the characters and the historic setting of the story seem to demand it. Quismondo, Toledo, July 18th, 1956. Twenty years after the beginning of the Civil War, the Avendano family celebrates in their estate one last time the ceremony that every year re-enacts as part of a ritual the execution of the youngest brother by the local peasants. Among the guests are an American scholar intrigued by such a strange tradition, and an officer of the Social Political Brigade determined to find the man who answers to the name of Federico Sanchez, a communist agent. In the sequence of encounters, different versions overlap and complement each other to reconstruct the fateful events that gave origin to the ceremony. No library descriptions found. |
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This novel is set on the twentieth anniversary of the murder, which is decided to be the last time the ritual is performed. Besides the family and the reluctant farmworkers, guests arrive to witness – an American writer who heard of this bizarre tradition from Hemingway, the children of the family, too young to remember the deed itself, and an officer of the security police, there both because he admires this method of putting the reds in their place, and because he suspects young Lorenzo, son of the executed, of communist activities. Constantly moving back and forth through the same day, with both memories from further back and glimpses of the future, this book is about secrets, sexual tension, the role of memory in our lives, and the kind of wobbly peace without real forgiveness that follows a civil war.
The small library in rural Ydre, where we spend some time every summer, has a wonderful summer sale. Besides old stuff, they also tend to sell a lot of new books that just haven’t worked out for them – usually books bought for all libraries in Sweden by the government, as a form of support system for small publishers. Most of these have never even been opened, and they sell for one krona each. Really, it’s the most wonderful place to pick up books from unusual countries, and titles you never heard of. This book was one of this year’s haul – the blurb sounded so interesting.
I find myself leaning this way, then that way with this book. At first, it’s literary style, it’s constant namedropping and eagerness to show off annoyed me. It felt old-fashioned in all the wrong ways. Then the storyline about the adamant fascist police Sabuesa, especially, gripped me. In the end, I’m left with the feeling that I read a book often focusing on the wrong things, which would have benefitted from a less literary style. Bonus points for introducing me to the powerful and fascinating renaissance art of Artemisia Gentileschi! ( )