Francisco Franco Bahamonde was a Spanish military general who led the Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War and thereafter ruled over Spain from 1939 to 1975 as a dictator, assuming the title Caudillo. This period in Spanish history, from the Nationalist victory to Franco's death, is commonly known as Francoist Spain or as the Francoist dictatorship.
For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer attached to a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned to blow up a bridge during an attack on the city of Segovia.
Salamis or Salamina is the largest Greek island in the Saronic Gulf, about two kilometres off-coast from Piraeus and about 16 km west of central Athens. The chief city, Salamina, lies in the west-facing core of the crescent on Salamis Bay, which opens into the Saronic Gulf. On the eastern side of the island is its main port, Paloukia, in size second in Greece only to the port of Piraeus.
The Feast of the Goat is a novel by the Peruvian Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa. The book is set in the Dominican Republic and portrays the assassination of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, and its aftermath, from two distinct standpoints a generation apart: during and immediately after the assassination itself, in May 1961; and thirty-five years later, in 1996. Throughout, there is also extensive reflection on the heyday of the dictatorship, in the 1950s, and its significance for the island and its inhabitants.
Robert Brasillach was a French author and journalist. He was the editor of Je suis partout, a nationalist newspaper which advocated fascist movements and supported Jacques Doriot. After the liberation of France in 1944, he was executed following a trial and Charles de Gaulle's express refusal to grant him a pardon. Brasillach was executed for advocating collaborationism, denunciation and incitement to murder. The execution remains a subject of some controversy, because Brasillach was executed for "intellectual crimes", rather than military or political actions.
Soldiers of Salamina is a 2003 Spanish drama film written, directed and edited by David Trueba, based on the novel Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas. It stars Ariadna Gil and Ramón Fontserè alongside Joan Dalmau, María Botto and Diego Luna. The film was nominated for eight Goya Awards in 2004, and won the award for Best Cinematography. It was selected as the Spanish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 76th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated.
The March: A Novel is a 2005 historical fiction novel by E. L. Doctorow. It won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (2006) and the National Book Critics Circle Award/Fiction (2005).
Execution is a 1958 war novel by Canadian novelist and Second World War veteran Colin McDougall (1917–1984). Although it won McDougall the 1958 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, it was his only novel, and after publishing it to wide acclaim he retreated into a quiet life as Registrar of McGill University in Montreal. Nevertheless, Execution stands with Timothy Findley's The Wars and Hugh MacLennan's Barometer Rising as one of the most widely read and studied Canadian war novels of the twentieth century.
The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (1990–2015) was a British literary award. It was inaugurated by British newspaper The Independent to honour contemporary fiction in translation in the United Kingdom. The award was first launched in 1990 and ran for five years before falling into abeyance. It was revived in 2001 with the financial support of Arts Council England. Beginning in 2011 the administration of the prize was taken over by BookTrust, but retaining the "Independent" in the name. In 2015, the award was disbanded in a "reconfiguration" in which it was merged with the Man Booker International Prize.
Javier Cercas Mena is a Spanish writer and professor of Spanish literature at the University of Girona, Spain.
Rafael Sánchez Mazas was a Spanish nationalist writer and a leader of the Falange, a far-right political movement created in Spain before the Spanish Civil War.
The Pact of Forgetting is the political decision by both leftist and rightist parties of Spain to avoid confronting directly the legacy of Francoism after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975. The Pact of Forgetting was an attempt to move on from the Civil War and subsequent repression and to concentrate on the future of Spain. In making a smooth transition from autocracy and totalitarianism to democracy, the Pact ensured that there were no prosecutions for persons responsible for human rights violations or similar crimes committed during the Francoist period. On the other hand, Francoist public memorials, such as the mausoleum of the Valley of the Fallen, fell into disuse for official occasions. Also, the celebration of "Day of Victory" during the Franco era was changed to "Armed Forces Day" so respect was paid to both Nationalist and Republican parties of the Civil War.
Gustavo Durán Martínez (1906–1969) was a Spanish composer, Lieutenant Colonel in the Spanish military, diplomat and United Nations official.
Charley Trujillo is a Chicano novelist, editor, publisher, and filmmaker. He is known for his novel and documentary Soldados: Chicanos in Việt Nam.
The Paracuellos massacres were a series of mass killings of civilians and soldiers by the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War that took place before and during the Siege of Madrid during the early stages of the war. The death toll remains a subject of debate and controversy.
Santiago Rafael Roncagliolo Lohmann is a Peruvian writer, screenwriter, translator, and journalist. He has written five novels about fear. He is also author of a trilogy of non-fiction books on Latin America during the twentieth century.
The term Bible fiction refers to works of fiction which use characters, settings and events taken from the Bible. The degree of fictionalization in these works varies and, although they are often written by Christians or Jews, this is not always the case.
The Anatomy of a Moment is a 2009 non-fiction book by Javier Cercas, which won the National Prize for Narrative Writing. An English translation by Anne McLean appeared in 2011.
Anne McLean is a Canadian translator of Spanish literature. She began to learn Spanish in her late twenties and developed her language skills while living in Central America. Some years later in England, she took a master's degree in literary translation. McLean has translated a number of Spanish and Latin American authors, including Gabriel García Márquez, Javier Cercas, Evelio Rosero, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, and Carmen Martín Gaite, among others. Jointly with the author, she won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize: in 2004 for her translation of Soldiers of Salamis and again in 2009 for The Armies by Evelio Rosero.
Andrés Trapiello is a noted Spanish poet and writer. He was born in Manzaneda de Torío, León, and studied at the University of Valladolid. He moved to Madrid in 1975, and has lived in the capital ever since.
