With a rare blend of grace and scholarship, Leslie Stainton raises the stakes of our appreciation for the greatest of Spain's modern poets, Federico Garca Lorca. Drawing on fourteen years of research; more than a hundred letters previously unknown to biographers; exclusive interviews with Lorca's friends, family, and acquaintances; and newly discovered archival material, Stainton has brought her subject to life as few biographers can. She describes his carefree childhood in rural Andalusia; his life in Madrid and Granada, then in New York, Havana, and Buenos Aires; his potent relationships with other Spanish artists, such as Salvador Dal, Luis Buuel, and Manuel de Falla; and, finally, his marginal political involvement in the Spanish Civil War that nonetheless cost him his life.
Lorca exasperated his family for years with his "idleness," but he captivated his many admirers through his charisma, passion, and artistic genius. Deeply divided, Lorca grappled with issues of class, culture, and identity-he struggled to come to terms with his homosexuality, and Stainton shows how that struggle informed his work.
Throughout, Stainton meticulously relates the oeuvre to the life. Her biography will quickly become the standard one-volume work on the poet.
