Luciano G. Egido’s case confirms somthing we cannot often state: there is no age limit for writing a great first novel.
We were sure that El cuarzo rojo de Salamanca (The Red Quartz of Salamanca) would
catch avid observers of the Spanish literary scene by surprise, just as it
surprised us. what we have here is a
novel written in the purest romantic tradition of Stendhal. Not only due to its historical bakdrop, but
also due to the abstracted and passionate nature of its unbalaced and
picturesque characters, like floats in some infernal dance painted by
Goya. The story involves the reader in
a fascinating and epic plot filled with
military feats, sentiments, passions, reflections, battles, rivalries,
intrigues, and betrayals.
Among the ruins left behind by the French and English
armies during the devastating years of the foreign invasions dating from the
beginning of the nineteenth century, amidst hate and fear, a youth who has
“come to like the taste of nothingness” - and the spiralling madness which breaks
down hope - joins a group of lancers fighting for independence. But it is also a struggle against his
father, a francophile who has tried to inculcate his foreign tastes in his son. It is above all, a struggle against his own
damned but irresistable incestuous love for Manuela, his unfaithful and
disloyal sister who would betray anyone for the passionate embrace of the
enemy: “I had no choice (...) but to go
on loving Manuela from a distance and to die anonymously in a gloriless
adventure.” Thus the young man embarks
on a twin struggle, both internal and external, for an independence that seems
impossible in times of turbulence and confusion, to overcome desperation so
that “life will be more than hating”.
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