Soldiers of Salamis: A Novel [Hardcover]

Javier Cercas (Author), Anne McLean (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 7, 2004

Spain's best-selling book of the year-an award-winning, wholly original and absorbing work of fiction by a modern master, at whose heart lies an investigation into the nature of historical truth.

In the final moments of the Spanish Civil War, fifty prominent Nationalist prisoners face a firing squad. Among them is Rafael Sánchez Mazas-writer, fascist, and founder of the Spanish Falange. As the machine guns begin to fire, Sánchez Mazas escapes into the forest. When a militiaman discovers his hiding place, Sánchez Mazas faces death for the second time that day. But the unknown soldier simply turns and walks away. Sánchez Mazas becomes a national hero and ultimately a minister in Franco's first government. The soldier disappears into history.

Sixty years later, as Cercas sifts through the evidence to establish what really happened, he realizes that the true hero may not be the one who was celebrated, but, rather, the soldier who chose not to shoot. Who was he? Why did he spare Sánchez Mazas? Every answer Cercas uncovers leads to another question in this powerful and elegantly constructed novel about truth, memory, and war.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Spanish journalist and novelist Cercas strives for a "true tale" in his first book to be published in the U.S., the story of a political prisoner during the Spanish Civil War who cheated death twice in one day. Narrated by a Spanish journalist also called Javier Cercas, the novel is the chronicle of his quest to uncover a story as slippery and charmed as its protagonist, Rafael Sánchez Mazas, a founder of the fascistic Spanish Falange, who became a minister without portfolio in Franco's postwar government. Before rising to his position of power, however, Sánchez Mazas was captured by a group of Republicans and marched into the woods along with his comrades to be executed; moments after his daring flight, "an anonymous defeated soldier" spied him-but said nothing. The facts of this fascist writer's miraculous escape quickly became legend, aided in no small part by the oral and written efforts of Sánchez Mazas himself. Sixty years later, Cercas, an inadvertent archeologist digging through his nation's bloody past, unearths revelations and epiphanies that are far less wondrous than the surface gloss, but much more useful to present-day existence. His thematic conclusions are powerful and humane enough to compensate for a narrative voice that is often speculative or long-winded. This work sometimes suffers from a scarcity of scenes and dialogue, but its moral core is smart and compelling.
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Review

"This book is magnificent...one of the best I've read in a long time."-Mario Vargas Llosa, El Pais

"With irresistible directness and delicacy, Javier Cercas engages in a quick-witted, tender quest for truth and the possibility of reconciliation in history, in our everyday lives - which happens to be the theme of most great European fiction. He has a fascinating tale to tell, which happens (mostly) to be true. He has written a marvelous novel."-Susan Sontag

"Cercas has succeeded, with one perfectly crafted book, in single-handedly redeeming the epic genre."-Alberto Manguel

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; 1 edition (February 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582343845
• ISBN-13: 978-1582343846
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,025,330 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "There are no heroes in peacetime...no living heroes.", March 20, 2004

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Soldiers of Salamis: A Novel (Hardcover)

In this unusual story of the Spanish Civil War, author Cercas experiments with the voice of his main character and with the form of this novel, which he describes as "a compressed tale except with real characters and situations, like a true tale." The unnamed speaker, a contemporary journalist in his forties, is investigating the story of Rafael Sanchez Mazas, a "good, not great" writer of the 1930s, who, in the final days of the Civil War (1936 - 1939) escaped a firing squad and lived to play a role in Franco's Nationalist government. The speaker believes that "forest friends" may have helped Sanchez Mazas survive the end-of-the-war turmoil, and he becomes obsessed with locating them, identifying the Popular front soldier who chose not to reveal Sanchez Mazas's whereabouts, and learning why they behaved as they did. As he investigates the story of Sanchez Mazas and the complex political alliances of the Civil War, the speaker realizes that he actually knows very little about this war, "not much more than I know about the battle of Salamis."

The speaker, who is obviously Javier Cercas himself, soon begins to expand the scope of his tale, investigating more than the verifiable facts about Sanchez Mazas and musing philosophically about the passage of time, the transcience of youth, the dubious legacy of war, and the nature of heroes. Wartime heroes live only as long as their friends remember them, and lives and memories are short: one must seize the moment and dance a paso doble in the time available.

The complex history of the Spanish Civil War in the first part of the novel is slow, full of unfamiliar names, places, and political alliances, but as the story of Sanchez Mazas unfolds, the reader gradually warms to the speaker's quest to learn everything he can about the incident in the forest. The scenes near the end of the book, set in a nursing home, are full of touching and emotional realizations, conveying powerful, universal messages about war and heroes from one generation to another (and to the reader) without being didactic. Cercas's style is honest and full of self-mockery, though some readers may be put off by his syntactically complex sentences, which are sometimes a page long. Focusing on what it means to be a hero, the novel is a tour de force in which the reader learns as much about the creative process of author Cercas as he does about the almost forgotten author Sanchez Mazas. Mary Whipple

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic - but NOT a historical novel, March 1, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Soldiers of Salamis: A Novel (Hardcover)

I just had to weigh in when I saw that this book had received two negative reviews, because I absolutely loved it. I read it first in Spanish, so I won't comment on the style (except to say that I thought the translation was fine), but as to the rest...what are these guys thinking? The best I can come up with is that the previous reviewers were looking for a straight historical novel...the kind of thing that spends fifty pages describing what kind of cufflinks people wore and using outdated slang to show how much research the author did. This is NOT that kind of book.

Seriously (and I dearly love GOOD historical novels), Soldiers of Salamis is more about contemporary Spain than about the Civil War. It talks about the war, sure, but the main characters (the narrator, his girlfriend, the old man Miralles, and the late Chilean author Roberto Bolano) exist in the present. They talk about the war because it's important how the war affects PRESENT DAY Spain. The closest parallel I can think of is calling Josephine Tey's novel "The Daughter of Time" a "historical" novel because it talks about Richard III. Like "The Daughter of Time," "Soldiers of Salamis" is a novel about doing historical research (and about looking for the truth, so maybe the parallel isn't so bad). And news flash: research involves "just talking to people" as one of the reviewers below put it.

Anyway, if you're interested in a novel set in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, this isn't the book. But if you're interested in a story about modern Girona, with humor, grace, and a great deal of emotion, buy this book.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Present history, April 20, 2004

By 

Jordi Serrats (La Jolla, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Soldiers of Salamis: A Novel (Hardcover)

I want to say that I loved the book, I was born in Girona and I was delighted to read how Cercas described the city and surroundings in a magnificent way. Besides I was surprised about the two bad reviews down there, I think the novel it is a tribute to all the people who fought in the Spanish Civil War and that are often forgotten. I must say that it is very recommendable to read this book in order to understand present spanish politics. I hope this helps to some people.
Jordi