José María Gironella
(Darnius, 1917-Arenys de Mar, 2003) Spanish novelist.A successful author in the years that preceded the late Franco regime, his works were intended to be an objective chronicle of the historical events of recent Spain.He studied at a seminary for a short time and then worked in various trades while pursuing a self-taught training.At the beginning of the war he joined the nationalist army, and at the end of the war he was able to access jobs consistent with his knowledge and talent, as a journalistic reporter and correspondent.
He began his literary career with the volume of poems Winter has come and you are not here (1945), which was followed by the novels A man (1946), Nadal award that year, and La marea (1949), on the defeat of Nazism and its consequences.He later achieved popularity thanks to the trilogy Cypresses believe in God (1953), One million dead (1961) and Peace has broken out (1966), in which he resorted to traditional narrative formulas to reflect through crossed plots the personal impression of intensely lived realities.
The first one deals with the immediate antecedents of the Civil War, while the second focuses on the years of the war and the third deals with the postwar period.Despite their simplifying and Manichaean approach, these works are interesting for their testimonial vocation and the author's ability to intertwine the romantic and the historical, skillfully selecting picturesque types, features and situations that reach the category of document.
Among the rest of his narrative production it is worth highlighting Condenados a vivir (1971), a river novel with aspirations of a sociological and generational chronicle, and Men cry alone (1986), personal vision of the Spanish political transition.In other works, such as Woman, get up and walk (1965) and La doubt disquieting (1986), Gironella explores the field of psychological and existential conflicts with a certain superficiality.
We must also mention his travel books Japan and its goblin (1965), In Asia one dies under the stars (1968), The scandal of the Holy Land (1978) and The scandal of Islam (1982), as well as the reports gathered in Cries of the sea (1967) and Cries of the Earth (1970).
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