Two young Athenians, Alexias and Lysis, compete in the palaestra, journey to the Olympic games, fight in the wars against Sparta, and study under Socrates. The brilliance of the sunshine, the glow of the sea and the islanders themselves appear on the pages as if etched in light.
The popularity of De Bernières' bestselling novel can be attributed at least in part to his intense, lucid descriptions of the island of Cephalonia, on which the novel is set. From childhood memories of hills lit up by bonfires on Good Friday, to descriptions of walking through the backstreets of Girona's Jewish quarter, this captivating personal memoir is also a brilliant portrait of the author's homeland.Ĭaptain Corelli's Mandolin, by Louise de Bernières Neither Spanish nor Catholic by birth, she nevertheless absorbed the traditions of Spain and felt the full impact of Franco's dictatorship.
Lucia Graves, daughter of the poet Robert Graves, grew up in the village of Deia on the island of Majorca. The rugged mountains and dense pine forests of the Spanish Sierra provide an atmospheric backdrop to Hemingway's classic novel.Ī Woman Unknown: Voices from a Spanish Life, by Lucia Graves An expert in the use of explosives, he is assigned to blow up a bridge to accompany a simultaneous attack on the city of Segovia. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerrilla unit in the mountains during the Spanish civil war. The author's prose brings the narrow streets of Barcelona's gothic quarter vividly to life.įor Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
Against the backdrop of a suffering city, the novel focuses on the life, love and adventures of a poor bookseller's son. The country is in the grip of the ruthless dictator, Francisco Franco. The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz ZafónĪ page-turning literary detective story, set in Barcelona in the aftermath of the Spanish civil war. Subtitled "A Story of Provincial Life", Flaubert's best-known novel tells the story of beautiful, bored Emma Bovary who, stifled by the parochial society of her husband and the townspeople among whom she lives, seeks to escape through extravagance and adultery, with devastating consequences. The story behind the novel's publication, following its discovery in a suitcase 65 years after Nemirovsky's death in Auschwitz, is almost as famous as the book itself. Divided into two parts, the first set in Paris, the second in a small rural village, the novel captures both the urgency of the times and the enduring character and beauty of the country under occupation. Nemirovsky's remarkable novel tells the story of France's fall to Germany in 1940.
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