Background
Camilo José Cela was born in Iria Flavia, Galicia, where his father's ancestors-some renowned, some of peasant stock-had lived for generations. His mother was of English ancestry. When he was 9, his family moved to Madrid.
( Awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize for Literature, Camilo Jos...)
Awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize for Literature, Camilo José Cela has long been recognized as one of the preeminent Spanish writers of the twentieth century. Journey to the Alcarria is the best known of his vagabundajes, Celas term for his books of travels, sketchbooks of regions or provinces. The Alcarria is a territory in New Castile, northeast of Madrid, surrounding most of the Guadalajara province. The region is high, rocky, and dry, and is famous for its honey. Cela himself is ?the traveler, an urban intellectual wandering from village to village, through farms and along country roads, in search of the Spanish character. Cela relishes his encounters with the simple, honest people of the Spanish countryside?the blushing maid in the tavern, the small-town shopkeeper with airs of grandeur lonely for companionship, the old peasant with his donkey who freely shares his bread and blanket with the stranger. These vignettes are narrated in a fresh, clear prose that is wonderfully evocative. As the New York Times wrote, Cela is ?an outspoken observer of human life who built his reputation on portraying what he observed in a direct colloquial style.
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(At the end of the Spanish Civil War, Tanis Gamuzo sets ou...)
At the end of the Spanish Civil War, Tanis Gamuzo sets out to avenge the death of his brother, who was abducted and killed during the war, in a work set in a backward rural community
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( Widely regarded as one of the best works by the winner ...)
Widely regarded as one of the best works by the winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize for Literature, San Camilo, 1936 appears here for the first time in English translation. One of Spains most popular writers, Camilo José Cela is recognized for his experiments with language and with difficult subject matter. In San Camilo, 1936, first published in 1969, these concerns converge in a fascinating narrative that is as challenging as it is rewarding, as troubling as it is compelling. A story of history as it happens, by turns confusing and startingly clear, echoing with news and rumors, defined by grand gestures and intimate pauses, the novel leads the reader into the ordinary life of extraordinary times. Beginning on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, San Camilo, 1936 follows a twenty-year-old students attempts to sort out his private affairs (sex, money, career) in the midst of the turmoil overtaking his country. In vivid and richly textured prose that distinguishes Celas work, the emotional reality of civil war takes on a vibrant immediacy that is humorous, tender, and ultimately transforming as a young man tries to come to terms with the historical moment he inhabitsand hopes to survive. Readers new to Cela will find in this novel ample reason for the authors growing reputation among audiences worldwide.
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(Christ versus Arizona turns on the events in 1881 that su...)
Christ versus Arizona turns on the events in 1881 that surrounded the shootout at the OK Corral, where Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Virgil and Morgan Earp fought the Clantons and the McLaurys. Set against a backdrop of an Arizona influenced by the Mexican Revolution and the westward expansion of the United States, the story is a bravura performance by the 1989 Nobel Prize-winning author. A monologue by the naïve, unreliable, and uneducated Wendell L. Espana, the book weaves together hundreds of characters and a torrent of interconnected anecdotes, some true, some fabricated. Wendell’s story is a document of the vast array of ills that welcomed the dawning of the twentieth century, ills that continue to shape our world in the new millennium.
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(This book reflects the crude reality of rural Spain in Fr...)
This book reflects the crude reality of rural Spain in Franco's time. It is full of human power and rich in social insight. Cela writes with great detail, but still maintains simplicity.
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(Bajo el titulo Nuevo retablo de Don Cristobita, Cela reun...)
Bajo el titulo Nuevo retablo de Don Cristobita, Cela reune un original, atractivo y brillante conjunto de cuentos (los cuentos escritos desde que me meti al oficio hasta hoy) con una prosa cuya prodigiosa vitalidad se vierte al paisaje, a los tipos, a las horas y a los instantes de su tempo narrativo. Cela es particularmente afortunado en el relato corto: lo mima, lo teje con un primor de un artesano con buenos mimbres, lo colorea de fiesta y despues lo echa a volar como una cometa risuena que salta y hace guinos. A veces, tiende al sarcasmo: Es pequenito, pequenito como Napoleon ?dice el? o como Kant, aquel filosofo cervecero, o como Cromwell, que una vez pego un susto tremendo a los ingleses. Otras, el juego voraz de la muerte y de la vida, se expresa en frases tragicomicas: Encarnacion Ortega Ripollet, alias Mahoma, tenia tres aficiones: la filosofia, el vino de Valdepenas y un vidriero-fontanero de la calle del Amparo que, la verdad sea dicha, no estaba nada pero que nada mal. En ocasiones, el escritor tine estos relatos de esa atmosfera de encantamiento que rodea las viejas leyendas de su tierra; otras, el aire de esperpento los cruza como un latigazo, pero siempre un halito poetico, desgarrado y melancolico atraviesa esta magica recopilacion de invenciones, figuraciones y alucinaciones.
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(Banned for many years by the Franco regime, Cela's master...)
Banned for many years by the Franco regime, Cela's masterpiece presents a panoramic view of the degredation and suffering of the lower-middle class in post-Civil War Spain. Readers are introduced to over a hundred characters through a series of starkly rendered interlocking vignettes, transforming this book from a social document into a towering work of inventive fiction. Filled with violence, hunger, and compassion, The Hive captures the ambitions and constraints of life under a dictatorship.
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(Sacristanes pecadores y alucinados, hombres lobo, pescado...)
Sacristanes pecadores y alucinados, hombres lobo, pescadores de sardinas y cazadores de ballenas, curas, meigas, sordomudos, suicidas, choronas, curanderas, fornicadores, sirenas, virgenes martirizadas las vidas y andanzas de todos ellos acompanan en un continuo fluir a naufragos, desaparecidos y ahogados, habitantes que danzan, como suspendidos, en ese territorio que esta entre la vida y la muerte, o quizas mas alla de la vida y la muerte. Madera de Boj nos situa en aquel lugar que los romanos entendieron como el fin del mundo, el Finis Terrae y, desde alli, Camilo Jose Cela dirige su mirada maestra hacia la fachada maritima gallega convirtiendose en puntual notario de la capacidad destructora de la Costa de la Muerte: da fe de los naufragios porque al tiempo se le puede dar marcha atras si se le mece con inteligencia y con carino. Con una prosa magnifica e innovadora, Camilo Jose Cela vuelve a sorprendernos con un viaje por una Galicia que nace del alma y vive en el alma; un viaje salpicado por el verdoso tinte de la lujuria y siempre pasado por el filtro del humor y del amor. Para Victor Garcia de la Concha, en Madera de Boj alcanza la narratividad lirica de Camilo Jose Cela su cima mas alta.
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(The extraordinary experimental final novel by the winner ...)
The extraordinary experimental final novel by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Boxwood might perhaps be best described as a kind of whirlwind: a vortex of marvelous writing about folklore, traditions, superstitions, cooking, nautical disasters on the Coast of Death (ships from afar spilling cargoes of oranges, typewriters, iron ore, oil, spices), elements of nature both cruel and beautiful, whales, priests, witches, ghostssprinkled with various autobiographies everything exquisite and crass in Cela's native home, Galicia, Spain. "If the Holy Ghost were a bat instead of a dove our religion would not be the one true faith and there would be fewer Catholics, and if he were a magpie or a jackdaw there would be none at all, the devil appears in the guise of a billy goat whose rump you kiss as a mark of homage and respect, the Holy Ghost could have been a swallow, but not a cormorant, the form taken by the Holy Ghost is well thought out, you immediately see the hand of God in it, Father Xerardino, the priest of San Xurxo, supposes the form might also have been a butterfly in all the colors of the spectrum...." (from Boxwood)
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Camilo José Cela was born in Iria Flavia, Galicia, where his father's ancestors-some renowned, some of peasant stock-had lived for generations. His mother was of English ancestry. When he was 9, his family moved to Madrid.
In Madrid Cela attended a number of secondary schools run by religious orders, finally graduating with an undistinguished record. At the University of Madrid he studied, in turn, medicine, liberal arts, and law but abandoned all three fields without earning a degree.
In 1942 Cela's short novel The Family of Pascual Duarte exploded upon the literary scene in Spain. After the upheaval of the Civil War the Spanish novel had almost ceased to exist. Baroja, Azorin, and Pérez de Ayala had little new to say, and Unamuno and Valle Inclán had both died in 1936. The Family of Pascual Duarte, somewhat like Albert Camus's The Stranger, which appeared in the same year, presents an alienated character whom fate seems to drive to unbridled violence. The violent actions of the protagonist, which cannot be fully explained sociologically or psychologically, are generally symbolic of the hopeless chaos of post-Civil War Spain. This novel introduced the Spanish literary manner known as tremendismo, a neobaroque and neopicaresque style, which concentrates on the violent and grotesque. Tremendismo is marked by extravagant and strident diction pointed toward the ugly, by sallies of grimly ironic humor, and by the presentation of irrational and alienated characters. After Rest Home (1943), which is based on Cela's experience in a tuberculosis sanitarium, and Las nuevas andanzas y desventuras de Lazarillo de Tormes (1944; The New Fortunes and Misfortunes of Lazarillo de Tormes), Cela changed directions and published The Hive (1950), which many regard as his greatest novel. In the beehive of metropolitan Madrid more than 200 characters, all of them fearful and lonely, pursue the necessities of food and sex. The novel emphasizes the grim impersonality of human relations and the pettiness of man's existence. Since Cela preferred not to develop sustained characters in his novels, he turned to another type of literature, the travel book. His first, Viaje a la Alcarria (1948; Journey in the Alcarria), became a minor classic, and he published several others. In these books the author as wayfarer trods the roads of ancient Spanish regions such as the Alcarria, attempting to discover the heart of the Spanish land and people. Cela also wrote short fiction with marked success. His Apuntes carpetovetónicos (1955) contains penetrating snapshots of provincial life. Of this type, his El gallego y su cuadrilla is a minor masterpiece. Cela's talents also lent themselves to novelettes, among which his best are probably Timoteo el incomprendido and Café de artistas, included in the volume El molino de viento (1956; The Windmill). After 1956 Cela lived with his wife in Palma de Mallorca, where he edited the literary journal Papeles de son Armadans and continued to write a variety of literary works, none of them, however, novels. After the Spanish dictator Franco died, Cela served as a delegate to the new constitutional convention. He also became somewhat known for a high lifestyle, driving at different times a Rolls Royce, a Bentley, and a Jaguar. Cela died from heart disease on 17 January 2002 at the Hospital Centro in Madrid, aged 85. He was buried in his hometown at the parish cemetery of Santa María de Adina.
(Sacristanes pecadores y alucinados, hombres lobo, pescado...)
(Bajo el titulo Nuevo retablo de Don Cristobita, Cela reun...)
(Christ versus Arizona turns on the events in 1881 that su...)
(At the end of the Spanish Civil War, Tanis Gamuzo sets ou...)
(Banned for many years by the Franco regime, Cela's master...)
( Widely regarded as one of the best works by the winner ...)
( Awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize for Literature, Camilo Jos...)
(The extraordinary experimental final novel by the winner ...)
(This book reflects the crude reality of rural Spain in Fr...)
(English translation by John Forrester. Colour Photo by Pa...)
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In an interview around the time of his 80th birthday, he derided the notion of inspiration as a necessary ingredient for writers.
In 1944 he married María del Rosario Conde Picavea. In 1990 they divorced. In 1991 he married Marina Concepción Castaño López. He had a son, Camilo José Cela Conde, from a previous marriage.