La España negra

A fascinating and unsettling journey through 1920s Spain, written in a style as raw as it is magnetic, with a strange tenderness tinged with a rather twisted sense of humor, Black Spain explores a country of abject poverty, cruelty, and festivity, of candles melting in dark churches, grimy taverns where hunger hangs heavy in the air, and deformed figures wandering through dusty alleyways, while death patiently sharpens its scythe on every corner. This edition includes engravings by the author, who, in the words of Camilo José Cela in his acceptance speech to the Royal Spanish Academy, speaking about this book, "created for himself, in his own image and likeness, a world in which to live, another in which to agonize, and yet another, tragic and mocking, in which to die."