Translation Rights TQE / The Soldiers of Salamis

When we published El vientre de la ballena  in 1997, we knew that Javier Cercas was a sure bet among the new Spanish novelists.  If there were still any doubts left, Soldados de Salamina (The Soldiers of Salamis) confirms once again that we are before a novelist of stature, agile and astute, capable of firing up the enthusiasm of even the most tepid reader. 

A young journalist stumbles by chance upon a fascinating and very significant story that dates from the Spanish Civil War, and sets out to reconstruct it.  When the Republican troops leave for the French border, on their way to exile, in the midst of the disorder of the exodus, someone makes the decision to execute a group of Franquist prisoners.  Rafael Sánchez-Mazas, founder and ideologist of the Falangist movement, and perhaps directly responsible for the fraticidal conflict, was among them.  But Sánchez-Mazas not only manages to escape from the collective execution... when the Republicans try to find him, an anonymous militiaman points a gun at him, and at the last moment, lets him go.  His lucky star will permit him to live in the forest until the war’s end, protected by the local peasants, even though he will always remember the militiaman with the strange gaze that did not turn him in.  The narrator attempts to unravel the secret of the enigmatic Sánchez-Mazas, of his amazing war adventure, but only to discover, in an unexpected twist, that the significance of this story is found where least expected, “because one does not find what he looks for, but rather what reality gives him.”

As the narrator keeps insisting, Soldados de Salamina is a “true tale”; the readers, however, will read it as a thriller:  Cercas takes us off on an investigation of historic events that is passionate because its purpose is to unravel a secret that refuses to be revealed, an essential secret that concerns not only Spain’s most uncomfortable past, but above all, the human condition.

Javier Cercas was born in Ibarhenando, Cáceres in 1962. He is the author of a book of short stories, Cuentos reales (True Tales) 2000, of a nouvelle, El móvil (The motive) 1987 and 2003, and of three novels, El inquilino (The Tenant) 1989 and 2000, El vientre de la ballena (The Belly of the Whale), and Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamis). The latter is a novel that reached unprecedented success in bookshops, with readers, writers, and critics. It has received the following prizes: Premi Llibreter 2001 Narrativa, Premi Ciutat de Barcelona, Premio Librería Cálamo al mejor libro del año 2001, Premio Salambó, Premio de la Crítica de Chile, IV Gran Premio Qué Leer de los Lectores, Premio de Novela Histórica de Cartagena, Premio Extremadura a la Creación, Premio de los Lectores Crisol, Premio Grinzane Cavour. Javier Cercas worked for two years at the University of Illinois and, since 1989, is professor of Spanish literature at the University of Girona. He collaborates regularly in the newspaper El País.