Lord of All the Dead: A Nonfiction Novel

By: Javier Cercas

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Synopsis: "A remarkable act of personal history: brave, revelatory and unflinchingly honest" WILLIAM BOYD"There is no-one writing in English like this: engaged humanity achieving a hard-won wisdom" DAVID MILLS, The TimesLord of All the Dead is a courageous journey into Javier Cercas' family history and that of a country collapsing from a fratricidal war. The author revisits Ibahernando, his parents' village in southern Spain, to research the life of Manuel Mena. This ancestor, dearly loved by Cercas' mother, died in combat at the age of nineteen during the battle of the Ebro, the bloodiest episode in Spain's history. Who was Manuel Mena? A fascist hero whose memory is an embarrassment to the author, or a young idealist who happened to fight on the wrong side? And how should we judge him, as grandchildren and great-grandchildren of that generation, interpreting history from our supposed omniscience and the misleadingperspective of a present full of automatic answers, that fails to consider the particularities of each personal and family drama?Wartime epics, heroism and death are some of the underlying themes of this unclassifiable novel that combines road trips, personal confessions, war stories and historical scholarship, finally becoming an incomparable tribute to the author's mother and the incurable scars of an entire generation.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
Book Size:: 288 Pages
ISBN-13:: 9780857058348
Related ISBNs:: 9780857058324
Publisher:: Quercus
Date of Addition:: 06/01/21
Copyrighted By:: Javier Cercas
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: History, Nonfiction, Travel, Literature and Fiction, Psychology
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.
Translator:: Anne McLean