Mazurka for Two Dead Men [Hardcover]

Camilo Jose Cela Conde (Author), Patricia Haugaard (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Spanish Civil War intrudes almost casually on the characters' picaresque doings in Cela's amorphous, bawdy novel, first published in Spain in 1983. Set in the mountainous region of Galicia and redolent with the Spanish countryside's wild beauty and its inhabitants' folkways, the work depicts a gallery of sinners, fools and misfits in overlapping yarns that span several generations. The plot involves Lionheart Gamuzo, who was shot in the back in 1936, and his brother Tanis, who in 1940 avenges the death with trained killer dogs. The blind Gaudencio, who works as an accordionist in a whorehouse, plays the same mazurka to commemorate these deaths, framing a sprawling canvas peopled with an enormous Rabelaisian cast, including jazz musician Uncle Cleto, who vomits whenever he's bored; the widow Fina, who is fond of bedding priests; and Roque Gamuzo, who is famed for his colossal member. Winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize for literature, Cela ( The Family of Pascual Duarte ) garrulously conveys the impression that "mankind is a hairy, gregarious beast, wearisome and devoted to miracles and happenings." The musical translation captures his lyricism and colloquial flavor.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Set in Galicia during the Spanish Civil War, this 1984 winner of the Spanish National Prize for Literature revolves around two murders, but the multiple narrative lines make reconstructing the exact chronology of events difficult. This fifth novel by the 1989 Nobel laureate to be translated into English recalls Cela's earlier efforts: the swarm of characters in The Hive (Farrar, 1990), the tremendista repugnance of The Family of Pascaal Duarte (Classic Returns, LJ 3/1/90), and the sexual obsessions of San Camilo, 1936 ( LJ 12/91). Though the novel is unified by the almost symphonic recurrence of epithets and of images like rain, the experimental fragmentation of the structure is devoid of any breaks and palls about 100 pages before the end. In addition, the colloquial speech often resists effective translation. For academic and larger public libraries.
- Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC, Dublin, Ohio
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: New Directions; First edition. edition (November 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081121222X
• ISBN-13: 978-0811212229
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,328,216 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a relatively newfound favorite of mine, May 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Mazurka for Two Dead Men (Paperback)

TRAGICOMEDY: it's all the rage. Or, at least in the establishment of "literary greats," this appears to be a trend. Camilo Jose Cela's book _Mazurka for Two Dead Men_ is no exception, and in this particular work, macabre humor is found on every page, interspliced with beautiful, confidingly poetic prose which Cela uses primarily to subtley change the moods of this book, which ends up playing out as something like an epic poem crossed with a drinking song with never-ending refrain. As a work of experimental fiction, this book is amazing. Cela's masterful control of his characters and dialogue is the token of his talent, which is showcased here in a manner which might seem cumbersome at first, but should be read in the manner in which a viewer attempts to see the image in the Magic Eye pictures at the mall- not by focusing directly on it in order to find it, but instead by shifting focus more to the periphery of the work. This book is hard to categorize and it's even harder to defend, since so few people I've recommended it to share my view that this is a masterpiece of rare achievement. (At least the Nobel Prize committee recognized his worth.) I still contend that they were reading it without realizing that Cela prefers to embed his story within the inobvious. This is how I ended up shucking the book off the three times before I ended up finally finishing it. It sure was worthwhile, though! I rushed out to get anything else he'd written. LITERARY SUPERSTAR

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A lurid, comic tale of 1930's Spain., November 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Mazurka for Two Dead Men (Paperback)

~It's probably not a classic for the ages, but I was still fairly entertained by this strange, rambling, wickedly funny revenge tale set during the Spanish Civil War. The simple, episodic plot (man kills his brother's murderer) is really just an excuse f~ in the grotesque. And it isn't as impressive as the other Cela novels I've read ("The Hive" & "The Family of Pascual Duarte"), but it's still a good opportunity for general readers to acquaint themselves with this delightfully eccentric--and st

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Stronger Finish Doesn't Offset Incoherant Beginning, May 1, 2005

By 

Randy Keehn (Williston, ND United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mazurka for Two Dead Men (Hardcover)

I rated this movie as a "3" because I would have rated the first two thirds of the books as a "2" and the last third of the book as a "4". I can believe that many a reader gave up on this book because of the repetitious, meandering, and confusing first two thirds of the story. I kept wondering why I didn't just put the book down and leave it because I was getting next to nothing out of it. There were a lot of different characters and brief accounts of a moment in their lives. Many of these were rather earthly events but we kept revisiting them albeit with an occassional expanded (or is it expended) insight. There was no coherance and, for my part, there wasn't even a clue who was narrating at any given time. Some events were recounted at least a dozen times with the only advantage being that we were starting to become more familiar with the names of the different characters. Although I came to appreciate why the author chose this technique, I think it put too much responsibility on the reader to sort things out. I believe Cela could have done a better job of bringing his ideas to life.

Finally, at the two thirds point in the book, we get a narration that we can follow and the various characters and events are woven into a story. The writing becomes impressive and I found myself underlining phrases such as, "Faith is the corkscrew of conscience" and "When life dies, death is born". Cela gives us a perspective of the effects of the Spanish Civil War and that was the reason I chose to read the book in the first place. Cela paints a picture of the dispair born of man's outrage against his fellow man. Man is both the protaganist and the victim and it is joy the is the biggest casualty.

The effects of the fraternal civil war has taken the joy out of life. That is, I believe, what Cela meant with his meandering beginning. The many recollections were of people who represented the past when life enjoyable. We are reminded of their demise as though it were a bookmark for the beginning of dispair. The theme expands to explain the title; the death of Lionheart was mourned as the primary bookmark of the beginning and the revengeful murder of his assassin bookmarks the end. Each was celebrated with the same mazurka that was played for no one else. The end of hostilities does not invite the return of the joy of life. Too much damage was done, too many memories were etched in stone. Life for the contempories of the Spanish Civil War would never again be the same.