The Valley of the Fallen
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Acclaimed translator Edith Grossman brings to English-language readers Rojas’s imaginative vision of Francisco de Goya and the reverberations of his art in Fascist Spain
This historical novel by one of Spain’s most celebrated authors weaves a tale of disparate time periods: the early years of the nineteenth century, when Francisco de Goya was at the height of his artistic career, and the final years of Generalissimo Franco’s Fascist rule in the 1970s. Rojas re-creates the nineteenth-century corridors of power and portrays the relationship between Goya and King Fernando VII, a despot bent on establishing a cruel regime after Spain’s War of Independence. Goya obliges the king’s request for a portrait, but his depiction not only fails to flatter but reflects a terrible darkness and grotesqueness. More than a century later, transcending conventional time, Goya observes Franco’s body lying in state and experiences again a dark and monstrous despair.
Rojas's work is a dazzling tour de force, a unique combination of narrative invention and art historical expertise that only he could have brought to the page.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Originally published in 1978, this challenging work begins with a fictional account of the relationship between the artist Francisco de Goya and the self-indulgent royal family of Carlos IV (Charles IV of Spain). Then the narrative jumps through time to just before the fall of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, picking up the story of a Goya biographer named Sandro Vasari. The troubled Vasari dreamily channels the words and actions of earlier chapters, in touch with Goya as he witnesses the royal collusion of his day and conveying a cautionary message for a Spain emerging from decades of fascism. Rojas uses lengthy descriptions of Goya's incisive portraits, revealing "the truth of man, inhabited by monsters," in his own portrayal of his characters, which will likely come alive for those with background knowledge. For those who cannot distinguish between Maria Luisa, Maria Teresa, and Maria Josefa, or don't know that Aza a was the last president of the Second Republic, this will be rougher going. Rojas uses the novel to present his philosophy concerning the futility of any political system, left or right. "In the end, history is summarized in simplifications... to amuse the mad gods who are dreaming us." To absorb this lesson, most readers in English will need supplemental resources.