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Review
`A brilliant reconfiguring of a key event in contemporary European history. Audacious and wholly fascinating' ----William Boyd
`Persuasive, brilliant and absorbing' ----Economist
`Richly imagined, suspenseful and surprisingly poignant ... a reminder of how Spanish history might have taken a dramatically different turn that evening thirty years ago' ----Financial Times
`An almost Shakespearean account of soldiers, politicians, mixed motives and the lust for power' ----Anne Chisholm, Sunday Telegraph --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
`Persuasive, brilliant and absorbing' ----Economist
`Richly imagined, suspenseful and surprisingly poignant ... a reminder of how Spanish history might have taken a dramatically different turn that evening thirty years ago' ----Financial Times
`An almost Shakespearean account of soldiers, politicians, mixed motives and the lust for power' ----Anne Chisholm, Sunday Telegraph --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Review
'A brilliant reconfiguring of a key event in contemporary European history. Audacious and wholly fascinating' William Boyd 'Javier Cercas' gripping account of the attempted Spanish coup in February 1981 uniquely combines a novelist's thrilling narrative skills with an historian's forensic rigour' Frederick Taylor, author of Exorcising Hitler and Dresden 'Javier Cercas has employed the forensic skill of an investigative journalist and his natural talent for historical narrative to capture a defining moment in a nation's transition from dictatorship to democracy. With this, his latest venture into his country's turbulent history, Cercas can rightly lay claim to being one of Spain's most talented, profound as well as clear literary voices' Jimmy Burns, author of Papa Spy and Barca
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Following his unconvincing meditation on American atrocities in the Vietnam war in "The speed of light" Javier Cercas returns to his own country's history for his latest work. "The anatomy of a moment" revisits the theme of the Spanish Civil War and its consequences that Cercas so brilliantly explored in "Soldiers of Salamis". However in his new book he eschews fiction, even the "post-modern" variety that he practices, which blurs the distinction between the real and the imaginary. Instead he employs a part philosophical, part journalistic meditation on the 1981 attempted coup to overthrow Spanish democracy.
"The anatomy of a moment" focuses on the three parliamentarians who refused to duck when the Civil Guard who invaded the Cortes opened fire. They were Gutteriez Mellado, a former Francoist general now deputy Prime Minister, Santiago Carillo, head of the Spanish Communist party, and Adolfo Suarez, the outgoing Prime Minister. Suarez is above all the hero of the book - in Cercas account a Francoist functionary and "provincial non-entity" who grew into the architect of democracy and a giant of Spanish history. The author returns again and again to the image of Suarez sitting alone on the prime minister's bench as the bullets fly around him, one of only three people prepared to risk their necks while those with more impecible democratic credentials cower behind their desks, as most of the rest of us would naturally and rationally have done in similar circumstances.
Parts of the book are difficult - the author talks to the reader as if they are already au fait with the history and politics of Spain. This leads, I thought, to a richer experience than books which spoonfeed the reader the historical background: in the end you feel you have earned the understanding you have achieved.
In places the book has the characteristics of a non-fiction thriller as the details of both the coup, led by senior elements in the army, and the countercoup, led by the King, are plotted. The book is also very moving, particularly regarding the travails of Suarez in later life, and a deeply affecting coda when the author reflects upon the life and politics of his own father.
The book is also deeply political, rejecting a current view prevalent in Spain that the rupture between Francoism and democracy was false and that Suarez ensured that those who had power under the dictatorship retained it under the constitutional monarchy. Cercas argues instead that the rupture was real and that Suarez was a "hero of the retreat" from dictatorship. That the author is prepared to set out such forthright opinions on this and other aspects of the coup add to the pleasure of the book: it is widely researched, deeply opinionated history, provocative, but not gratuitously controversialist. It demands the reader thinks while keeping them entertained.
A great book.
"The anatomy of a moment" focuses on the three parliamentarians who refused to duck when the Civil Guard who invaded the Cortes opened fire. They were Gutteriez Mellado, a former Francoist general now deputy Prime Minister, Santiago Carillo, head of the Spanish Communist party, and Adolfo Suarez, the outgoing Prime Minister. Suarez is above all the hero of the book - in Cercas account a Francoist functionary and "provincial non-entity" who grew into the architect of democracy and a giant of Spanish history. The author returns again and again to the image of Suarez sitting alone on the prime minister's bench as the bullets fly around him, one of only three people prepared to risk their necks while those with more impecible democratic credentials cower behind their desks, as most of the rest of us would naturally and rationally have done in similar circumstances.
Parts of the book are difficult - the author talks to the reader as if they are already au fait with the history and politics of Spain. This leads, I thought, to a richer experience than books which spoonfeed the reader the historical background: in the end you feel you have earned the understanding you have achieved.
In places the book has the characteristics of a non-fiction thriller as the details of both the coup, led by senior elements in the army, and the countercoup, led by the King, are plotted. The book is also very moving, particularly regarding the travails of Suarez in later life, and a deeply affecting coda when the author reflects upon the life and politics of his own father.
The book is also deeply political, rejecting a current view prevalent in Spain that the rupture between Francoism and democracy was false and that Suarez ensured that those who had power under the dictatorship retained it under the constitutional monarchy. Cercas argues instead that the rupture was real and that Suarez was a "hero of the retreat" from dictatorship. That the author is prepared to set out such forthright opinions on this and other aspects of the coup add to the pleasure of the book: it is widely researched, deeply opinionated history, provocative, but not gratuitously controversialist. It demands the reader thinks while keeping them entertained.
A great book.
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Javier Cercas is one of the very few post-modernist authors that I enjoy reading. His novels are superbly written but extremely enjoyable; in that sense he can be described as a literary page turner. As I also have a strong interest in history non-fiction I decided to take a punt on his account of Monday 23rd February 1981 when a group of right-wing soldiers 'stormed' the Spanish parliament. Cercas may not be a historian by trade but he has produced an immensely engrossing account of the events that unfolded that day.He succeeds (at least I think so) in getting inside the mind of the principal protagonist that day and it is this skill as a novelist that makes the book so fascinating. I suppose some people will regard this approach as 'faction' but quite frankly who cares when a writer is so good. I can't recommend this book more strongly.
Format:Kindle Edition
For anyone interested in Spain this account of the failed 1981 coup is essential reading. Brilliant and revealing. Like everything about today's Spain it it is beholden to the legacy of the Civil War. Cerca is a novelist turned investigative journalist with great success.
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