Translation Rights TQE / Inés and Mirth

The year is 1944 and Inés lives secluded and under constant watch in the home of her brother, a provincial delegate for the extreme right-wing party. She has suffered all sorts of disasters since she decided to support the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War, when she was living alone in Madrid. But when she secretly hears the radio announcing a military operation to reconquer Spain, Inés becomes full of courage and of secret happiness and flees to meet the guerrilla.

Mixing events from History with the stories of fictional characters, Inés y la alegría masterfully narrates the unknown and amazing story of the guerrilla army invasion of the valley of Arán, in the north of Catalonia. It is a beautifully written, unrestrained and passionate novel about the men and women who fought with conviction in order to liberate Spain, who lived exiled in France and returned after Franco’s death to a country they could no longer recognize and, worse yet, to a Spain that showed itself forgetful and indifferent to their modest epic.

Inés y la alegría is the first installment of a narrative project made up of six independent novels that share a common spirit and the heading, “Episodes of an Unending War”.

Almudena Grandes (Madrid, 1960)  became widely known as a writer in 1989 with her novel Las edades de Lulú, which won the XI Sonrisa Vertical Prize. She has received the acclaim of readers and critics ever since. She is the author of eleven novels and two books of short stories that have established her as one of the most solid and internationally-known narrators in contemporary Spanish literature. Many of her works have been taken to the big screen, and her novel, El corazón helado, one of the most acclaimed and long-lasting successes in current Spanish literature, has received, among other awards, the Fundación Lara Prize, the prizes of the booksellers in Madrid and Seville, the Rapallo Carige in  Italy and the Prix Méditerranée in France. Her novel Inés y la alegría was awarded the Critics Prize in Madrid in 2011, the Elena Poniatowska Prize 2011 and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize 2011, and El lector de Julio Verne was selected best book of 2012 by the readers of El País.