Christopher Zaragoza

Cristóbal Zaragoza Sellés (Villajoyosa, Alicante, March 4, 1923-Orba, Alicante, February 25, 1999) was a Spanish writer.

Biography

Zaragoza was born in Villajoyosa in 1923 into a middle-class family. His father was a captain in the merchant navy. He studied high school and graduated in Philosophy and Letters at the University of Valencia in 1946. He created an academy for secondary and professional education in Villajoyosa where he worked as director and professor of letters until 1962, when he settled in Barcelona, where he started collaborations in the daily press.

He is also in charge of literary criticism in the newspaper Noticiero Universal and in the Diario de Barcelona under the command of Martín Ferrand. He resigns, out of solidarity with the director, after a controversial dismissal. He collaborates in magazines and translates, ("Snobissimo", biography of "Marcos Redondo", translations of the nascent treatises on sexology, etc.), while being part of the staff that adapts the Great Larousse Encyclopedia from French to Spanish (especially dealing with the art and sports sections).

Active in the anti-Franco movements since 1968 and in the last year he published his first novel "El escándalo del silencio". Aware of the existing gap in documentary literature on the Republican side, he began a brief series of vindictive books, The Generals of the People, Popular Army and Military of the Republic, The uprising in Africa, etc. In this sense, his work Letter from Franco to Vizcaíno Casas, a reply to the latter's Y al tercero año resuscitó, opens the doors to popularity, consolidated after obtaining the prize Ateneo de Sevilla in 1975 with the novel Manú.

He continues to publish his works, including Generations, a long trilogy on the Transition: Generations, in 1979. Generations 2. From the coup to change , in 1988. Generations 3, fable, in 2013.

In 1981 with his novel Y Dios en la última playa he won the Planeta prize. Of this novel - translated into Russian with more than 300,000 copies sold in the former USSR - and more than a million sold in Spain, copies are still being sold in various collections. Leave the second part of it unpublished, as well as a biography of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. In 1986 she won the Plaza International Novel Prize with her book Al fin la libertad, translated into Portuguese, Russian and German. He is co-author with Aranguren, Aleixandre, Alberti, Buero Vallejo, Cela, Miguel Delibes, Gabriel García Márquez, Rulfo, Umbral, Gala, Fernando Savater, among others of the Book of Peace with autograph manuscripts.

Major published work

• The scandal of silencePlanet, 1968.
• They didn't have the promised land.Planet, 1969.
• Shirt change (Paza y Janés) 1970
• A fist knocks at the door (29 editions), 1971.
• Domestic birds and birdsBruguera, 1974.
• Manu (Ateneo Prize in Seville), Planet, 1975.
• The Discovery of the World`, RTVE Library, 1976
• The Uprising in AfricaBruguera, 1977.
• Live the chainsBruguera, 1977.
• The generals of the peopleBruguera, 1977.
• Sundays emptyPlanet, 1977.
• Letter from Franco to Vizcaino CasasSquare and Janes, 1978.
• Generations 1, Plaza and Janés, 1979.
• And God on the last beach, Planet Prize, 1981.
• The color of the windPlanet, 1982.
• People's Army and Military of the RepublicPlanet, 1982.
• A dead man in 105.Square and Janes, 1984.
• Death act. A reflection on the violence of the SpanishPlanet, 1985.
• Dialogue with the absent writerSquare and Janes, 1985.
• At last freedom, International Plaza Award, 1986.
• The presidentPlaza and Janés, 1987.
• Generations 2Square and Janes, 1988.
• I, Juan PrimPlanet, 1989.
• The Book of Peace, Hispaven, Caracas, Venezuela, 1990.
• Cervantes. Life and semblanceMondadori, 1991.
• Tale BirdsSeuba, 1993.
• The Book of Deception in the EyesInst. Alicantino de Cultura Juan Gil-Albert, 2006
• Generations 3 Editions Carena, 2013

Libro de Oro of the Planeta Awards, more than a million copies sold of the same title.

There are reviews of the work of Cristóbal Zaragoza, among others, in: "Narrativa Española" Great contemporary writers. "Chronicle of the 20th century". "20th century appendix". "Literature of Spain day by day". "Dictionary of Spanish and Hispanic American literature". Salvat multimedia encyclopedia. His work has been in the National Library of Paris since 1995. His complete works can be found in the Instituto Cervantes Library Network. International authors and writers who's-who, Who is who in Spanish letters, and in the main literature dictionaries and general encyclopedias.

In 2003, the Villajoyosa City Council created the Cristóbal Zaragoza International Novel Award.

Summary of his works

The scandal of silence

Ed. Planet, 1968

Focused in the 1960s, El Escándalo del Silencio presents a family conflict within a home of the Spanish high bourgeoisie. Insurmountable conflict, in which the wife, a splendid woman in her maturity, seeks, after the years, the first love of her life.

The novel, written by the young daughter of this woman, is gaining in dramatic intensity as the action goes on to become a tragedy. The victim is the only daughter of this marriage. A lucid young writer who, in view of the fact that there is no legal situation capable of separating her parents, manages to unite them at the expense of her sacrifice and the contempt of the hypocritical society that surrounds her and will end up segregating her from her womb.

Letter from Franco to Vizcaino Casas

Ed. Plaza y Janés, 1978

Free of any desire for power, the last Head of the Spanish State directs an extensive letter to Vizcaino Casas inviting him to reflect. It is a sincere letter in which Franco acknowledges his own mistakes and those of those who pardoned him and fought him. In it are mixed the most vivid memories of his intimacy, with the remorse, the self-accusation with the repulsion to his loyalties of old and the chameleons of that moment of Spanish politics. Partisans and detractors will find in this mesmerizing mystical motifs of reflection on our last History.

Cervantes, life and semblance

Ed. Mondadori, 1991

This semblanza by Miguel de Cervantes, in addition to paying tribute to the author of the Quixote, aims to fill an existing gap in the “life” books: that of the biographies on documentary sources and studies from the field of research, without losing its informative character. The author has moved the purpose of giving the reader a decent, affordable, easy-to-read job and done in the light of the latest research. Based on the biographies written to this day, the attempt is made to end the old fables rooted in popular consciousness, to destroy topicals and to clarify rumors that in nothing favor the most universal of our writers.

Popular Army and Military of the Republic (1936-1939)

Ed. Planet, 1982

The People's Army and Military of the Republic (1936-1939) is an objective historical synthesis of the formation and changes experienced by the loyal army to the republican government from July 30 to the end of our civil war. It also contains the biographies of the most representative military of the government side, both those from the Popular Militias (El Campesino, Durruti, Líster, Mera, Modesto, Tagüeña) and the career professionals (Asensio, Hidalgo de Cisneros, Casado, Miaja, Rojo, Guarner, Pozas, etc.) and those of whom, in some way,

The author not only manages an extensive and selected biography, but makes it clear that if the names of Brunete, Belchite, Guadalajara, the Ebro and so many others remain a blood reggae in the collective memory, it is no less true that in such names the only real popular revolution that has occurred in the modern European West is summarized.

Dialogue with the absent writer

Ed. Plaza and Janés, 1985

When Anaïs Nin was asked on one occasion what reason she had to write, she replied, “To create a different world. ”

In this novel, the author enters the world of the writer, the skeptic veteran and the illusioned beginner. It is the world of his frustrations, his manias, his tremendous loneliness and the suffering of the seemingly banal fact of filling a blank folio. It is the fact of knowing something different from others – neither better, nor worse-, of being touched by the grace of a burlon geniecillo, heavy bromist at times, to which everything is given, the time, the material advantages that life provides, their often enjoyments and whims.

Dialogue with the absent writer, on whose pages the tenderness and indulgence are repeated, is written in a humor key. This is what the theme demands, the hell of the novelist and his ephemeral glory, when the work is presided over by authenticity, and by the passion to create.

A fist knocks at the door

Edic. 29, 1971

In this novel, the author enters into the particular problem of the political exile. The narration takes place in Barcelona in the 1970s, with its inconformity, its labor conflicts and its student revolts. The old Valls, a former socialist leader, returns to Barcelona after thirty years of exile. His life in the petty bourgeois home of his daughter does not satisfy him. Tired of seeing in his own the image of those who had fought so furiously, betrayed at last, the former fighter, who understands that he has arrived late, makes a surprising decision, not without before charging upon his conscience with a doubt of blood and honor that will torment him the rest of his days.

Shirt change

Ed.Plaza and Janés, 1970

The Change of Camisa addresses the debated theme of the exiled political trajectory somewhat unequivocal, which again in the homeland gets integrated. Germán Bataller, enriched in exile by art of birlibirloque, becomes the central figure of this second part of the trilogy, which conforms with Un puño knocks at the door and did not have the promised land. “Deus ex machina” of the work is the measured ambition of money, which moves the threads of puppets. But along with this world of corruption, parallel to it and in a divergent way, is the world of the neat ideals of unconformist youth. This serves to move the action to distant scenarios: the Paris of 68, Moscow, among whose youth the spectre of excision begins to be appreciated, the intimate tragedy of the old exiles of Perpignan. The skillful pirueta of certain more or less politicized sectors clashes against the moral authority of a youth front that also knows of doubt. And this is the key word: doubt. The search for the truth, through the new man, presented and expected by some and yet so feared by others.

They didn't have the promised land.

Ed. Planet, 1969

Time and sea: two immensities. Insert into them—prisoners rather—, twelve men who strive to be better, who struggle to continue believing in the great lie of life.

They did not have the Promised Land is the great drama of man in all his dimension: of the ambitious, of the idealist, of the poor of spirit, of the rebel, of which it is said that he is mad because he speaks with the gulls and in every cloud he sees a recental... Man and his world, an intricate, difficult, inward and cruel world at the same time, dramatic and overflowing with humor.

Burla mocking, written in an unraveled and recognized style, the novel, at the same time, supposes a profound lesson of humanity, a wonderful living document, which portrays thoroughly and objectively a bleeding reality of our time.

Live the chains!

Cistóbal Zaragoza – Ed. Bruguera, 1977

In this work, the author addresses the study of the last years of Spanish absolutism, until the beginning of the Carlist conflict. It is a portrait, based on historical sources of a different sign, of that Bourbon more undesirable than “Deseado” that responded to the name of Fernando VII; of the king who after having pronounced the famous phrase: “We will be frank, and I the first one, on the constitutional path,” defrauded the people who, in his name, had violated the armies of Napoleon the first great defeat.

The Uprising in Africa

Ed. Bruguera, 1977

17 July 1936. Romerales, head of the Melilla garrison, orders a general inspection of the units. He has just received news from the Government that point to the possibility of a military uprising against the Republic.

His action had unforeseen consequences: the coup of the officers of the U.M.E. (Union Militar Española) unchained prematurely. In Morocco the state of war was declared, and the next day Franco in the Canary Islands and poded in Mallorca joined the rebellion. The Civil War began.

With his usual and unbeatable impartiality, the author analyzes the gestation of the uprising and the events of those fateful days. Events that determined the end of the II Republic and conditioned almost half a century of the recent history of Spain.

The generals of the people

Ed. Bruguera, 1977

For years of the Republic there was little talk about the men who defended her with their struggle or their lives, even less. With his usual impartial and magisterium, the author addresses the difficult task of explaining the actions, ideas, virtues and defects of these men –heroes in many cases – proscribed for so long. Through their military actions on the different fronts, their political affinities, their discords and their affections, we finally know the military careers, and the leaders of the Popular Army. And also, of course, André Malraux, George Orwell, all the men who, from all countries, came to defend their ideals in the battlefields of Spain: the men of the International Brigades.

A dead man in 105.

Ed. Plaza and Janés, 1984

On occasion, when we look at the newspaper in the morning, the news is inserted on the first page, it overwhelms us: in one of the rooms of a well-known hotel the body of a teenager appears. Suicide? Apparently, and according to the indications, the boy of the 105 has spent the night with a young woman, now disappeared, whose description the employees of the establishment cannot agree on. Young woman who also lost her virginity among the sheets in which the body of her alleged lover lies now.

This is the start of One dead in the 105, a novel of intrigue without topical research to use, without the classic cast of suspects who try to circumvent the Law, seeking each one his alibi. Only dramatic magnetophonic tapes and a half-wrapped judge who tries to interpret the message engraved on them by the teenage couple, are the elements that the author manages to keep the reader's attention on track, to the surprising end.

In a simple style, sometimes colloquial to tearing, and after addressing the philosophical problem of the existence of the real world, the author offers the reader an intriguing fiction in which, in addition, he questions the formal technique and discourse of the so-called “black novel.”

Manu

Ed. Planet, 1975 (Ateneo Prize of Seville)

“Manú” is an extraordinary adventure novel about the life of a real character. Aware of this, the author often sacrifices stylistic concern to action. Because “Manú” prevails the trepidating rhythm of a dynamic narrative structure, sagazly collapsed, that drags the reader into the whirlwind of the peripecia. This peripecia, by lived, acquires a special relief of humanity.

If we had to place this work of the writer within the classifications to the use of the narrative, we would possibly find its most suitable place in the line of our picaresque. Manú, the protagonist, in many cases converts drama into laughter. He lives in a leap of slaughter as Lazarus or Stephen did, and, like them, he's deflating in the pages of the work a very peculiar philosophy drawn from life itself.

All that precedes would, however, give a colorless image of this work, if we do not add that what actually confers upon it the transcendental value is the intense love of life and the confidence that the protagonist has in himself even in the most troubled situations.

Domestic birds and birds

Ed. Bruguera 1974

The author of this treaty on domestic ornithology, unites, to his deep knowledge of the matter, a good proven craft of writer. These circumstances, together with the numerous illustrations accompanying the text, make this volume an encyclopedia of useful and beautiful content. We are therefore faced with a singular book that, in the interest of the topic adds a practical structure that facilitates reading and quick consultation.

Act of Death (a reflection on the violence of the Spaniards)

Ed. Planet, 1985

In the event of our most recent history, and according to Américo Castro, perhaps our great mistakes are hidden behind the ignorance of the Spanish “about its Spanish being”. Contributing to unveil some of these mistakes, “of monstrous consequences”, is the ultimate end of Acta de defunción, a lucid reflection of the author on the violence unleashed between the Spaniards of one and another in the last civil war.

With the exception of the deaths produced in the fronts and in both rearguards, the work analyzes the circumstances and whys of the executions of some of the best Spaniards of the time and what was indicated in the death record, which almost never coincided with the truth.

Relevant people in various fields, as they were in the letters Maetzu, Loca, Miguel Hernández; as they were in the politics Zugazagoitia, Companys, José Antonio Primo de Rivera; as they credited for their clean nationalist execution and their sincere religiosity Blas Infante or Manuel Carrasco i Hormiguera. Those who, finally, died in prison or in exile, suffering from pain in Spain: Besteiro, Antonio Machado, Azaña, Prieto and so many more.

A pondered reflection on the violence of the Spaniards serves as an introduction to the biographies of some of the characters uselessly sacrificed on both belligerent sides. What a crime would be, perhaps, the search for one's own identity and the good of those who, as heirs of the ancient Hispanics, also fell in search of theirs in the most incarnated civil confrontation that records our history.

I, Juan Prim

Ed. Planet 1989

I, Juan Prim is a successful interiorization around the novel existence of General Juan Prim and Prat. The statesman who, if he had not been killed, would have taken Spain out of the obscurantism and backwardness he was in during the second half of the nineteenth century.

As a historical document, the author recreates in Yo, Juan Prim a whole time full of suggestion, with the conflicts inherent in European nationalism, the unification of Italy and Germany, the birth of Machinism and the crisis through which the Pontifical States go through.

Written in the first person, the novel recreates the difficult childhood of the protagonist in Reus, where he was born; it evokes his time of volunteering in the Christian army and defender of the queen girl, Isabel II, whose destruction would contribute however in the revolution of 1868 together with Serrano and Topete; it gives detailed account of the Prim conspirator, of the hero of Castillejos, of the Spanish adventures in Turkey and Mexico, of the Illuminating interiorization, reference is made to the family life of the Count of Reus and Marquis of Castillejos, to the intimate world of his memories, which will accompany him to the bed of death. In this clear dark is where the gallery of notables of the time will move: Cánovas, Pius IX, Napoleon III, Garibaldi, Pi and Maragll, Queen Isabel and her son, the future Alfonso XII, the sinister Paul and Angulo.

The story of Cristóbal Zaragoza is the last week lived by the general, from Christmas Eve of 1870 to the day of his death, which occurred three days after the attack he was a victim in the Madrid street of the Turk. Dark crime, such as magniicides, that the courts of justice failed to clarify, although the Court of History did.

The president

Ed. Plaza y Janés 1987

The President is the novel biography of Don Niceto Alcalá Zamora, the first President of the Second Spanish Republic. As it is conceived and developed, this work does not respond to the traditional account of the life of the character in linear sense; that is, from its birth to death, or from one to another determined time of its existence. It is a complex literary artifice in which the biography and the motivator of the memories of that one, that is, the author of fiction, play a par. Who, on the other hand, informs his character about the political and social state in which Spain is half a century after our last civil war. Now it begins to speak of federalism, ab political concept originates from the republican state, it is not enough to remember the fate of our last republic, centralist and bourgeois. And with it, that of President Alcalá Zamora, the great ignored, the politician on which the great slab of silence weighs with which some and others covered his name and extraordinary personality.

The desire to rescue the historical memory and human profile of Don Niceto, has encouraged Cristóbal Zaragoza to travel through France and Spain in search of the footsteps of the forgotten President. He spoke with his eldest daughter, Doña Purificación; he spoke with his son-in-law, the colonel of the Guardia Civil in a situation of retirement don José Navarro, and, on the basis of the Memoirs of the President himself, he has built a novel that, because of its originality and the complexity of its narrative style, proves it as one of the best fabulous in Spanish literature.

Following the publication of this book, the author made contact with the direct family of Alcalá Zamora. For a while, the author travelled with the old Mercedes of the President.

Tale Birds (First written in Villajoyosa, about 1960).

Ed. Seuba, 1993

This volume collects a series of stories starred at “birds” of singular customs. By their pages they parade, fly or parlour the human way, from the cuckoo and exploited to the swallow of the sea in love with an impossible fish, through the versaillesca abubilla, the aristocratic vicejo or the laborious picamaderos. Between drama and irony, mocking, the author humanizes the clays and writes stories that participate in the traditional apologist, obviously modernized. There is the beejaruch, the ravenous steward, the roaring roar and the romantic russian, among others; all, without a doubt, little birds born to stare at stories, in the same way that among humans, there are those who are born to “account bird”. Nature, always said, is wise.

The argumental anecdote, the simplicity of style and the tenderness used by Cristóbal Zaragoza is highlighted. This does not exclude the originality of the image and sometimes the boldness with which it solves it. Book of great documentary value, is the latest version of a manuscript that was initially written in the early 1960s, one of the first works of the author.

The color of the wind

Ed. Planet, 1982

The author shows here, once again, his status as a great novelist by offering us an evocative history developed in Mexico. In these pages we can approach the problem of this tremendous and subjugating country, with its economic crises, the peculiarity of its democratic system and the corruption that affects multiple sectors. As a result of a journey through Mexican lands, his great gifts of observed coupled with a special sensitivity that makes him instinctively attracted by the political world and social inequalities, they dragged Cristóbal Zaragoza to write this beautiful novel. This work is, in essence, a tribute to the Mexican people, as well as a courageous denunciation of the various evils that afflict it.

At last, freedom (a stop in the “top-less”)

Ed. Plaza and Janés, 1986, Novela International Prize

At last, freedom (A stop in the “top-less”), the author seeks to create a literary archetype that reflects the viscerally good, generous, supportive man of the fallen, a being of deep moral convictions. We are, therefore, faced with a singular character, entered into years, who forgets himself and at the end of his life, poor and unworked, accepts without the least scruple a job in a certain top-less room. An unsuspecting event projects Ortiz de la Bonafé to elevate him to the highest peaks of popularity: the miracles of TV and the media.

The action is located in the current Valencia along a Holy Week, with the empty city. The protagonist, Ortiz de la Bonafé, lives his own passion of eviction, with a daughter and the woman, through a series of adventures in a way parallel to the Passion of Christ. The overwhelming logic of such a disconcerting character, his behavior, will be the cause of finally finding his freedom, the only thing he retains. Not without first, his confrontation with the public authorities and the church.

Irony, tenderness, humor, just reflection at the precise moment and the vivacity of dialogue, are the main ingredients of this new account of Cristóbal Zaragoza, served by a sober style, debushed verbal economy.

Sundays empty

Ed. Planet, 1977

How did the Spanish people react in the republican area to the imminence of defeat? What did they think of the peace that the orphaned refugee was coming, the sacristan who hid in the attic fears and beauty, the tomb of the people, the persecuted lady of order that killed hunger and panic by making her particular black list? “Vacuum Sundays” responds to many of these questions, which the historian rarely asks and which, however, are living history.

Between the sperpent and the sunny vision of certain facts that occur in an Anglican people on the last Sunday of war, “The empty Sundays” presents a fresco of clearly human characters, of intensely dramatic situations, sometimes decanted to the bufo side of life. All this gives the measure of the way of thinking of those Spaniards bound up in the conflict without knowing how or why. The work, in which perhaps its main ingredients are the intrigue novelesca and the tear of the narration put to its service, is undoubtedly the most poised in the copious production of Cristóbal Zaragoza.

And God on the last beach

Ed. Planet, 1981, Planet Award

A young man who belongs to a Basque terrorist command is involved in very dramatic circumstances that give an unexpected turn to his life, and the novel that plays a leading role, without failing to be at any time a tale of trepidating action and a mirror of our current history, points to the reflection that concerns us all. The author has gone to look for the theme of his book in some of the most painful aspects of Spain today, and has transformed this palpitating question of violence and death that has in vile the entire country in an extraordinary novel that is much more than a report or a chronicle: a human synthesis of conflicts that seem irresolvable, presented with an indisputable mastery that makes this work one of the most passionate testimonies of this Spanish life.

Generations I (Spain)

Ed. Plaza and Janés, 1979

Generations is the novel of the last half century of Spanish life. Protagonist of this extensive story is our society. With his ideas and evolution. With the ideological struggle that the generations are taking place over these fifty years. He struggles that, at times, as in our civil war, he fought hands and consciences and perpetuated for years the grudge, when not hatred, within the families.

Forming two planes that converge at the end of the story, Generations is also a faithful Spanish trasunto to the transition to democracy. From the jubiltic manifestations that filled our streets in the first days to the disenchantment of the last times, going through the crucial moments, such as the riddle of the “Galaxia Operation” and the constitutional referendum. All of this is in the cane complex of an intriguing novelist plot that has as its background all the burden of passions, illusions, doubts and failures that entails living.

Classical realistic novel, Generations contains the best ingredients of the genre: human quality seeks the characters, precise reflection, the domain of descriptive technique and dialogue. But Generations is more than all this. Because in this elaborate novel the author thoroughly recreates reality, without supplanting it, at the same time that he deepens the awareness of the characters in search of family demons. Those who have taken us to the disaster so many times, precisely when the horizon of our coexistence was most clear. Generations is, in short, an indispensable work in our library and a classic already in Spanish literature.

Generations II

Ed. Plaza y Janés, 1988

Generations II is presented with the heading From the coup to change to cover the period between the 23-F of 1981, the date of the assault on Congress, and the end of 1982, shortly after the triumph of the socialists in the polls.

Following the formal structure of Generations I – two narrative planes that converge at the end of the work – and with the same protagonists – the clan of the Acosta – the argumental thread extends and runs along the tense era of the transition, that of the great unknowns. What does ETA claim? What do you see the autonomy in the LOAPA bad? When and why does the safari start against Ruiz Mateos? What actually happened on the evening of 23-F? Was the judgement of the Military Court equitable? Questions, to which much of the Spanish society still does not find convincing answers.

But Generations II is more than the historical anecdote observed by the novelist from the perspective of time. In the work it deepens on several issues, especially in the origin of the authentic change of society, a change that is made in the consciousness of Spanish and is externalized in the street, in the homes, in the fashionable places of Madrid and that will configure the new generations.

Between the historical chronicle and the new story, the characters of Generations II advance in time for the difficult years of the transition, from the time of the Isidore of Suresnes, able to enchant with its ethical message to a whole people, to the Philip who wins the elections after demarxistizing and overtaking his party, the PSOE.

The Book of Deception in the Eyes

Ed. Instituto Alicantino de Cultura Juan Gil-Albert, 2006.

In this posthumous novel, Cristóbal Zaragoza reflects the writer’s hell, told by Ginés Bullón, “the most foolish of the apprentices of this ingrateful craft of writer, who manifests himself devoutly of Don Miguel de Cerbantes, who serves him as secretary as well as of field and square mozo since the death of Sancho, and of whose misery is followed since there was knowledge of him, Esquicha. A work that the author wrote ten years before his death, and that is a tribute to the most outstanding and vilified of our writers, as well as a denunciation of envy, malice, hatred that surrounds even extenuation, such as an inexorable bond, the ingenuity of the creator. In writing it, without knowing it, C. Zaragoza was directed to the same abyss, to the same despoilt that irremediably is repeated through the history of literature, advocated by some enemies who, living in the galaxy of mediocrity and resentment, never forgave his freedom, independence and above all his great quality. All an omen of the last years that touched him to live, this novel, after the time, will not only be a sincere tribute to Don Miguel de Cervantes, but also, with all merit, a tribute to himself. The language used by the author presents a double dimension, which corresponds to the two times in which the protagonist moves: an ancient, cult Spanish, very elaborate, with historical references, with classic quotes and sayings that irremisibly move us to the time of Cervantes; and a current, spontaneous, living, fast, sometimes amoral, language of the unfortunate time in which he lived. A novel, in short, dedicated to every lover of literature, and especially to those who aspire to write, because in it they will find many and very good reasons to move forward without ever expecting the recognition of their contemporaries. To those future generations he dedicated C. Zaragoza this beautiful novel.

Generations III

Ed. Carena, 2013.

The friendship of Alexander Acosta and John of God is fraught with the body of a common friend. This random fact serves as a start to the last part of the trilogy begun in 1979. The story of this third part begins in the Olympic Barcelona of 1992, and passes in a asylum, where our two protagonists will live voluntarily. From that place - which is not an asylum to use - this fables fable begins. At first, given its opposite ideology, life in common does not seem easy for our two characters. They overcome the initial discrepancies giving themselves to metalworking games, thanks to their great memory and portentous erudition. To their fabulous knowledge and the profound ideological footprint that has marked their lives, a long life experience is joined, allowing them to spread the reality without shaking their hands or covering their noses, because they are nauseabunda and crude. The author, a great connoisseur of the history of Spain, ingenia a fable that is not so much, given the premonition of events that - as if of a terrible curse it was to be treated - must persecute us until today. Happy to open the eyes to the generations to come, Cristóbal Zaragoza takes advantage of the edition of this volume to give to readers four more novels, without concealing that it does it to scorn of those who hated it in life.