Books Burn Badly
- Authors
- Rivas, Manuel & Dunne, Jonathan & Manuel Rivas
- Publisher
- Vintage Digital
- Tags
- literary , historical , war , spain , boxers (sports) - spain , war & military , boxers (sports) , spain - history - civil war; 1936-1939 , fiction , sports
- ISBN
- 9781409089490
- Date
- 2006-06-01T00:00:00+00:00
- Size
- 1.13 MB
- Lang
- en
On 19 August 1936 Hercules the boxer stands on the quayside at Coruña and watches Fascist soldiers piling up books and setting them alight. With this moment a young carefree group of friends are transformed into a broken generation.
Out of this incident during the early months of Spain's tragic civil war, Manuel Rivas weaves a colourful tapestry of stories and unforgettable characters to create a panorama of twentieth-century Spanish history. For it is not only the lives of Hercules the boxer and his friends that are tainted by the unending conflict, but also those of a young washerwoman who sees souls in the clouded river water and the stammering son of a judge who uncovers his father's hidden library.
As the singed pages fly away on the breeze, their stories live on in the minds of their readers.