Translation Rights TQE / The blind ants

The definitive edition of a 20^th century classic

An English ship carrying coal for the blast-furnaces in Bilbao becomes stuck on the coast of Biscay until its shell finally breaks and drops its load into the sea. The entire town of Algorta goes to the coast at night, like a human tide pulled by their need, to pick up the coal which the waves have carried onto the shore. Sabas Jáuregui knows that he cannot let this opportunity pass by and he involves his entire family. Through the violent storm, Sabas, along with his sons and his brother-in-law, struggle in the cliff to pull up the coal. At midnight, a tragedy will trigger the family’s progressive fall into misfortune. Each member must fight his own particular battle, but all are overcome by Sabas’ tenacity, his strong willpower that pushes all of them in spite of the hate that it provokes. Only Ismael, the youngest son, will defend his father unconditionally.

Ramiro Pinilla submerges the reader into the deep desolation of an imminent tragedy, which is the result of an obstinate mentality and of the adverse destiny which the characters must face. Fifty years later, the definitive edition of a legendary novel, winner of the Nadal Prize and the Critics Prize in 1961.

“One of the best Spanish novels in the last fifty years”. Rafael Chirbes, Livres Hebdo

“We have finally been able to recover (…) this first novel by Pinilla, awarded with the Nadal Prize in 1960. And what a lesson it is for the current market!” Abc

“Pinilla is one of the most well-established figures in contemporary Spanish narrative. Fifty years later, Las ciegas hormigas deserves the label of 20^th century classic.” La Vanguardia

On the author, “Pinilla is one of the five big names in Spanish literature of the past one hundred years.”

El Cultural

Ramiro Pinilla was born in Bilbao in 1923. He won the Nadal Prize in 1960 and the National Prize of the Critics in 1961 with the novel Las ciegas hormigas (The Blind Ants), and was a finalist to the Planeta Prize in 1971 with Seno (Breast).  For almost three decades he voluntarily distanced himself from the publishing industry. During that time, Pinilla published his own works, such as En el tiempo de los tallos verdes (In the Age of Green Stems, 1969), Recuerda, oh recuerda (Remember, Oh Remember, 1974), Primeras historias de la Guerra interminable (The First Stories of the Never-ending War, 1977), La gran guerra de Doña Toda (The Great War of Mrs. Toda, 1978), Andanzas de Txiqui Baskardo (The Adventures of Txiqui Baskardo, 1980), Quince años (Fifteen Years, 1990), and Huesos (Bones, 1997). Pinilla returned to the publishing circuit with Verdes valles, Colinas rojas (Green Vallies, Red Hills), a trilogy made up of the novels La tierra convulsa (The Earth Trembles), Los cuerpos desnudos (Naked Bodies), and Las cenizas del hierro (Iron Ashes) that won the Euskadi Prize 2005, the National Critics Prize, and the National Prize for Narrative in 2006. That same year, Pinilla published La higuera (The Fig Tree), a novel about the Civil War, humiliation, and forgiveness that is currently being translated into several languages.