Javier Cercas

Soldiers of Salamis

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In the final moments of the Spanish Civil War, fifty prominent Nationalist prisoners are executed by firing squad.  Among them is the writer and fascist Rafael Sanchez Mazas.  As the guns fire, he escapes into the forest, and can hear a search party and their dogs hunting him down.ÂÂ
The branches move and he finds himself looking into the eyes of a militiaman, and faces death for the second time that day. But the unknown soldier simply turns and walks away.
Sanchez Mazas becomes a national hero and the soldier disappears into history.  As Cercas sifts the evidence to establish what happened, he realises that the true hero may not be Sanchez Mazas at all, but the soldier who chose not to shoot him.  Who was he?  Why did he spare him?  And might he still be alive?
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223 printed pages
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Quotes

  • c13431682has quoted8 years ago
    ‘It lays bare the virtual impossibility of historical certainty, the whimsicality of fate, the unpredictability and unreliability of memory and the elusiveness of truth … Cercas perfectly captures the uncanny ways in which a story evolves’
  • c13431682has quoted8 years ago
    If you were required to read only one book about Spain and its civil war, this should be that book.
  • c13431682has quoted8 years ago
    oldiers of Salamis is a study of memory and forgetting, of courage and delusion, as much as a straightforward narrative of wartime victors and victims.
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