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      • Classic fiction (pre c 1945)
        February 2020

        The keys of the dodecahedron

        by Ángel Pajín Álvarez

        In the unstable Spain of 1937, where hates fought cruelly against inequities, a beautiful valley in the foothills of the Peaks of Europe lose their peace and stability to their people’s disgrace. During that cold December with mountain peaks overflowing flawless snow, squadrons of German war airplanes, from the Condor Legion, fly nearly at heads level of the terrified locals. Those engines from hell make their way to bomb the North Area, defended by brave and seasoned miners from Asturias, whose defensive bastions are located on the brink between León and Asturias, under the form of two sound and sturdy bunkers. Yet a terrible day, one of those planes falls (or is knocked down) in the village and its pilot disappears mysteriously… That fact triggers gruesome days of tortures, assaults, and murders carried out by the Luftwaffe soldiers and the Spanish Political-Social Brigade agents sent from the capital. And by a satrap of a fateful memory… in the area. Nevertheless, such sorrow is compensated as through magic: love. The love between the North inhabitants and a beautiful “princess” from that land. It is not until 1964 when a diverse group of young people made up by one Spaniard, two German persons, and one American woman, resident in the precious German town of Freiburg im Breisgrau, decide to go back to the conflict area to puzzle out all pending mysteries. And they certainly do! United by something else than the affection they had to each other and their relationship with some of the tragedy actors, these two couples bring in the positive side to all previous inequity. They do so despite all risks their trip involve and mostly in the final part of the journey. The peace, friendship, and respect between different ethnic, religious, and ideological groups would be the result of so much sacrifice and effort by the members of the new “Legion”, now made up by the noble and peaceful youth of our time.

      • Fiction

        Primera Memoria /The Island

        by Ana María Matute

        “This is an old and wicked island. An island of Phoenicians and merchants, ofbloodsuckers and frauds.” Ana María Matute’s 1959 novel is a powerful and unsettling coming-of age novel, set on Mallorca during the Spanish Civil War. It’s a stifling story of rebellious adolescence, narrated by Matia, as she struggles against her domineering grandmother, schemes with her mercurial cousin Borja and begins to fall in love with the strange boy Manuel. Steeped in myth, fairy tale and biblical allusion, the novel depicts Mallorca as an enchanted but wicked island, a lost Eden and Never Never Land combined, where the sun burns through stained glass windows and the windtears itself on the agaves. Ostensibly concerned with Matia’s anxieties aboutentering the adult world, this internal confl ict is set against the much wider,deeper, and more frightening confl ict of the civil war as it plays out almostsecretly on the island, set in turn against the backdrop of the Inquisition’s massburning of Jews in previous centuries. These two confl icts shimmer at theedges of Matia’s highly subjective account of her life on the island, where life isdrawn along painful and divisive lines.

      • Fiction
        January 2019

        Paper & Ink

        by Maria Reig

        The thrilling story of a woman who fights to rise up to the Establishment settled in Madrid before the Spanish Republic. Upstairs Downstairs. A love story full of obstacles. Madrid. Beginning of the 20th century. Elisa is raised by her wealthy bourgeoisie godmother. The feeling of belonging nowhere and a sense of rebellion mark her life. She will not only seek to run away from the limits imposed to women, through journalistic writing and passing herself off as a man, but she will also fight to take control of her life and give herself up to love. A strong and resolute female character, who will fight for her freedom, in a journalistic world ruled by men, in a convulsive period for Spain. A sublime portrait of Madrid, in a twenties setting: the perfect start of the 20th century environment.

      • Fiction
        May 2020

        The Avenue of Illusions

        by Xavi Barroso

        From a servant in an upper-class home to a Vaudeville star. A woman ahead of her time. A stirring and turbulent story of an era. Francisca and María arrive in Barcelona, capital of Vaudeville and anarchism, to work as servants. Francisca has an indomitable character. She dreams of being an artist with a freer life than society has destined her for. She will soon meet Joan, a young anarchist who will steal her heart and reveal to her the magic of Paralelo, the theater-lined avenue. Francisca’s loyalties will be tested in a revolutionary Barcelona with a flourishing theater scene. Strong of character, committed to women’s suffrage and workers’ rights, she will also see the darker side of the city, the humiliation, solitude, betrayal, and unrequited love, but none of this will keep her from success and fame.

      • Fiction
        June 2020

        Postcards from the East

        by Reyes Monforte

        A paean to liberty, identity, and hope in the middle of one of the greatest human catastrophes of our history. Madrid, 1980. A woman receives a box of postcards and photos of people she doesn’t know. “These are the postcards your mother wrote when she was in Auschwitz.” In these letters, she will discover the secret that her mother, Elle, kept for thirty-five years: that she was a prisoner of the Nazis and kept texts and photographs from the women in the concentration camp. She wanted to write their stories. One of them is Maria Mandel, a real person, the cruelest and most bloodthirsty SS woman, who lived during the Third Reich, and who would take Elle on as her reluctant protégée. Josef Mengele, Heinrich Himmler, Irma Grese, Ana Frank, Alma Rosé, and Gisella Peri also make their appearance.

      • Fiction
        March 2020

        Hannah

        by Christian Galvez

        Florence under the Nazis. Two timelines. A palindrome that joins two generations. An unknown hero. A story based on real events Florence, 1944. German consul Gerhard Wolf, the Guardian of Ponte Vecchio, saved the lives of hundreds of Jews during the Nazi occupation, kept the Germans from stealing the artworks in the Uffizi gallery, and saved Ponte Vecchio from being destroyed by mines. Florence, 2019. Hannah returns to Spain from Florence because her grandmother, Hannah, is dying. With her will go one of her deepest secrets: how she lived through the Nazi occupation of Florence in 1944. Hanna will find a Wehrpass, a Nazi passport belonging to a soldier who died in combat in 1943, and next to her grandmother’s name, she sees the text: “Hannah, girl number 37. G. Wolf.” Why did her Jewish grandmother’s name appear in a Nazi passport?

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