Soldiers of Salamis [Paperback]

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

I hesitate to use the words "probably the best book I have ever read" but this is probably one of the best books I have ever read. It is outstanding in every aspect -- use of language, construction, pace, insight. I have no way of ascertaining if the original Spanish is as good as the translation but I cannot believe that such a superlative book was not written superlatively well to begin with.
If you think, as I did, that the middle section drags slightly - stick with it. There is a very good reason that is explained soon into the third and final part. You will be well rewarded if you do so.
Occasionally you read a book where the final sentence makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. The final page of Soldiers of Salamis did that for me.

I question whether 'Soldiers of Salamis' is actually a novel. Essentially it is an investigation - a factual account of the research into an historic event by a disillusioned journalist, his bitter-sweet relationship (both sexual and otherwise) with his girlfriend, detailed accounts, complete with their physical attributes, of people he interviewed, together with descriptions of what was eaten and drunk, in which restaurants they were eating and what the view was from the window etc. He also describes his frustrations in not getting enough information during these meetings about the life and near death of his subject - Rafael Sanchez Mazas - co-founder of the Falangist Party, which was responsible for the destruction of a flawed, yet legitimate, democracy, and the visitation on Spain of an horrific civil war. [It was also responsible for the rise of General Franco, who later outflanked the intellectuals (like Mazas) to create an unpleasant dictatorship that held the development of Spain back for three decades.]

So Javier Cercas' investigation was entirely factual - as was its subject matter. The only 'non-factual' (i.e. fictitious) element to the book was his speculation about why the mysterious Soldier X spared Mazas' life. My question, therefore, is 'Why call this a novel'? Could it have been that the marketing of a non-fiction book would prove less lucrative, because, in reality, there's barely enough 'speculation' in it even to sustain a piece of 'flash-fiction'?

The 'firing squad' episode is described in the Foreword, is repeated about a third of the way through and then, again, at the three-quarter point, and the repetition is irritating. I had the impression (in fact, the author actually confirms this) that he would never have finished the book had it not been for the chance encounter with a man (Morales, or Mirales) who had been in the outfit that had tried to execute Mazas. Although he keeps us in suspense about whether he would turn out to be Soldier X, I found this episode to be really poignant, and he brought this old man to life quite beautifully.

I think the author might have made much more of the relationships that Mazas developed with the 'forest friends', the young Republican deserters who saved him from a lingering death in the woods. That would then have created the basis for a real novel. However, since Mazas never met them after the war, although he did help them in other ways, too much is recorded about his relationship to Franco and his government for a work of fiction to be created. To be fair to the author, he made a point of telling his friends, and his employers, that he was writing a true story, but, somehere along the way he (or his publishers) changed his mind.

This has been described in a pro book review as 'the greatest novel to come out of the Civil War'. Come on ... that's just hype. One national newspaper review had it 'reducing Hemingway's 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' to a picnic in the park' (or words to that effect). Pull the other! What it does, though, is give an account from the less acceptable side of the lines (albeit from a liberal perspective) which is quite rare, and it casts some light on a very murky, Spanish post-war era, although it adds very little information about the Civil War that you can't get in a good history book or in Orwell's 'Homage to Catalonia'.

Well worth the read, though, even if it leaves you puzzling about what constitutes a novel.