Lee Langley

A corpse in waiting

Cercas’s own great-uncle, an idealistic teenage Falangist who died fighting for Franco, provides the theme for his subversive novel set in the Spanish Civil War

issue 11 May 2019

Who is a hero? Javier Cercas, in his 2001 novel Soldiers of Salamis, asked the question, searching for an anonymous hero, a soldier in the Spanish civil war. The book won major prizes and transformed Cercas from a respected Spanish novelist into an international literary figure.

Eighteen years on, he returns to the war with his new novel, Lord of All the Dead.

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